Anthropic is one of the few independent AI research firms that can stand beside OpenAI and the tech giants. The company allows developers to build on top of its AI models, requiring significant capital and compute. Despite the Amazon deal, Anthropic will continue to partner with Google, positioning itself as a neutral player among AI research houses. The deal raises questions for Google about its role in AI and its future strategy.
Key takeaways:
- Google Cloud faced performance issues with its service to Anthropic, an AI startup and key customer, leading to a month-long, seven-day-per-week sprint to fix the problem.
- Anthropic announced a new investment of up to $4 billion from Amazon, making Amazon Web Services its primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads, a week after Google initiated the sprint.
- Despite the Amazon deal, Anthropic will continue to partner with Google, positioning itself as a neutral player among AI research firms.
- The Amazon deal raises questions for Google about its role in AI and whether it can balance building its own AI models with Google DeepMind and maintaining AI customers in the cloud.