Amazon has agreed to invest up to $25 billion more in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup that created the Claude chatbot, the companies said Monday, the latest in a series of mammoth deals between tech giants and AI startups.
Amazon, which previously invested $8 billion in Anthropic, is already one of the start-up’s biggest investors. In the latest deal, Amazon plans to invest $5 billion initially, with the potential to add another $20 billion if Anthropic reaches certain milestones.
Antropic, in turn, has committed to spending $100 billion on computing power and other services from Amazon’s cloud computing over the next decade. The startup will also continue to use specialized computer chips that Amazon has designed as an alternative to expensive chips from Nvidia, the Silicon Valley chipmaker that dominates the artificial intelligence market.
The biggest tech companies continue to pour billions of dollars into AI despite concerns from some investors that the costs are too high. Spending on AI has soared to record highs over the past few years, raising questions about whether the boom can be sustained.
The deals between Amazon and Anthropic are also the latest examples of circular deals at the heart of the AI boom. Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Nvidia have invested huge sums in companies like Anthropic and OpenAI. In exchange for these start-ups, they buy massive amounts of computing power from the same investors.
Amazon and Anthropic are betting they can deliver cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology using alternatives to Nvidia’s powerful but expensive chips. Over the past year, Anthropic has become one of the biggest users of Amazon’s newest chip, known as Trainium.
“Our users are telling us that Claude is increasingly important to their work, and we need to build the infrastructure to keep up with rapidly growing demand,” Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said in a statement.
Andy Jassy, Amazon’s chief executive, said in a statement that Anthropic’s bet to run its models on Amazon’s chips over the next decade “reflects the progress we’ve made together on custom silicon.”
In February, Anthropic completed a funding round that brought $30 billion into its coffers, valuing the fledgling company at $380 billion, more than double its September valuation. The new deal with Amazon has no impact on Anthropic’s valuation.
Amazon said in February that it would also invest $50 billion in OpenAI, the start-up behind ChatGPT. OpenAI said it will spend more than $100 billion on Amazon’s services.
Amazon has told investors it expects to spend $200 billion on capital spending this year, mostly to build data centers and fill them with chips used to power AI.
Mr Jassy wrote in a letter to shareholders this month that the investments were not made “on a hunch” but reflected commitments from OpenAI and other unannounced deals.
(The New York Times sued OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023 for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems. Both companies denied the claims.)
