Amazon spends $2.75 billion on AI startup Anthropic in its largest venture investment yet

by | Mar 27, 2024 | Financial

In this articleAMZNFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTJakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesAmazon is making its largest outside investment in its three-decade history as it looks to gain an edge in the artificial intelligence race. The tech giant said it will spend another $2.75 billion backing Anthropic, a San Francisco-based startup that’s widely viewed as a front-runner in generative artificial intelligence. Its foundation model and chatbot Claude competes with OpenAI and ChatGPT.The companies announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in September, and said at the time that Amazon would invest up to $4 billion. Wednesday’s news marks Amazon’s second tranche of that funding.Amazon will maintain a minority stake in the company and won’t have an Anthropic board seat, the company said. The deal was struck at the AI startup’s last valuation, which was $18.4 billion, according to a source. Over the past year, Anthropic closed five different funding deals worth about $7.3 billion. The company’s product directly competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in both the enterprise and consumer worlds, and it was founded by ex-OpenAI research executives and employees.News of the Amazon investment comes weeks after Anthropic debuted Claude 3, its newest suite of AI models that it says are its fastest and most powerful yet. The company said the most capable of its new models outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini Ultra on industry benchmark tests, such as undergraduate level knowledge, graduate level reasoning and basic mathematics.”Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and AI at AWS cloud provider.Amazon’s move is the latest in a spending blitz among cloud providers to stay ahead in the AI race. And it’s the second update in a week to Anthropic’s capital structure. Late Friday, bankruptcy filings showed crypto exchange FTX struck a deal with a group of buyers to sell the majority of its stake in Anthropic, confirming a CNBC report from last week.The term generative AI entered the mainstream and business vernacular seemingly overnight, and the field has exploded over the past year, with a record $29.1 billion invested across nearly 700 deals in 2023, according to PitchBook. OpenAI’s ChatGPT first showcased the tech’s ability to produce human-like language and creative content in late 2022. Since then, OpenAI has said more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies have adopted the platform, spanning industries such as financial services, legal applications and education.Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services don’t want to be caught flat-footed.It’s a symbiotic relationship. As part of the agreement, Anthropic said it will use AWS as its primary cloud provider. It will also use Amazon chips to train, build and deploy its foundation models. Amazon has been designing its own chips that may eventually compete with Nvidia. Microsoft has been on its own spending spree with a high-profile investment in OpenAI. Microsoft’s OpenAI bet has reportedly jumped to $13 billion as the startup’s valuation has topped $29 billion. Microsoft’s Azure is also OpenAI’s exclusive provider for computing power, which means the startup’s success and new business flows back to Microsoft’s cloud servers.Google, meanwhile, has also backed Anthropic, with its own deal for Google Cloud. It agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, comprising a $500 million cash infusion, with another $1.5 billion to be invested over time. Salesforce is also a backer.Anthropic’s new model suite, announced earlier this month, marks the f …

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[mwai_chat context=”Let’s have a discussion about this article:nnIn this articleAMZNFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTJakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesAmazon is making its largest outside investment in its three-decade history as it looks to gain an edge in the artificial intelligence race. The tech giant said it will spend another $2.75 billion backing Anthropic, a San Francisco-based startup that’s widely viewed as a front-runner in generative artificial intelligence. Its foundation model and chatbot Claude competes with OpenAI and ChatGPT.The companies announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in September, and said at the time that Amazon would invest up to $4 billion. Wednesday’s news marks Amazon’s second tranche of that funding.Amazon will maintain a minority stake in the company and won’t have an Anthropic board seat, the company said. The deal was struck at the AI startup’s last valuation, which was $18.4 billion, according to a source. Over the past year, Anthropic closed five different funding deals worth about $7.3 billion. The company’s product directly competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT in both the enterprise and consumer worlds, and it was founded by ex-OpenAI research executives and employees.News of the Amazon investment comes weeks after Anthropic debuted Claude 3, its newest suite of AI models that it says are its fastest and most powerful yet. The company said the most capable of its new models outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini Ultra on industry benchmark tests, such as undergraduate level knowledge, graduate level reasoning and basic mathematics.”Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next,” said Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and AI at AWS cloud provider.Amazon’s move is the latest in a spending blitz among cloud providers to stay ahead in the AI race. And it’s the second update in a week to Anthropic’s capital structure. Late Friday, bankruptcy filings showed crypto exchange FTX struck a deal with a group of buyers to sell the majority of its stake in Anthropic, confirming a CNBC report from last week.The term generative AI entered the mainstream and business vernacular seemingly overnight, and the field has exploded over the past year, with a record $29.1 billion invested across nearly 700 deals in 2023, according to PitchBook. OpenAI’s ChatGPT first showcased the tech’s ability to produce human-like language and creative content in late 2022. Since then, OpenAI has said more than 92% of Fortune 500 companies have adopted the platform, spanning industries such as financial services, legal applications and education.Cloud providers like Amazon Web Services don’t want to be caught flat-footed.It’s a symbiotic relationship. As part of the agreement, Anthropic said it will use AWS as its primary cloud provider. It will also use Amazon chips to train, build and deploy its foundation models. Amazon has been designing its own chips that may eventually compete with Nvidia. Microsoft has been on its own spending spree with a high-profile investment in OpenAI. Microsoft’s OpenAI bet has reportedly jumped to $13 billion as the startup’s valuation has topped $29 billion. Microsoft’s Azure is also OpenAI’s exclusive provider for computing power, which means the startup’s success and new business flows back to Microsoft’s cloud servers.Google, meanwhile, has also backed Anthropic, with its own deal for Google Cloud. It agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, comprising a $500 million cash infusion, with another $1.5 billion to be invested over time. Salesforce is also a backer.Anthropic’s new model suite, announced earlier this month, marks the f …nnDiscussion:nn” ai_name=”RocketNews AI: ” start_sentence=”Can I tell you more about this article?” text_input_placeholder=”Type ‘Yes'”]
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