Amazon to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, a rival to ChatGPT developer OpenAI

E-commerce giant Amazon has announced a significant investment of up to $4 billion in the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, marking a strategic move to secure a minority ownership stake in the company. This investment amplifies Amazon’s aggressive AI strategy as it strives to keep up with competitors such as Microsoft and Google, both of which have made substantial advancements in the AI landscape.

Anthropic, founded about two years ago by former OpenAI research executives, recently unveiled its AI chatbot named Claude 2. Amazon is particularly interested in capitalizing on the potential of generative AI, a domain that includes technologies like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude chatbots.

The collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic aims to propel generative AI forward. As part of this partnership, Anthropic has chosen Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its primary cloud provider. Anthropic plans to grant AWS customers early access to exclusive features for model customization and fine-tuning capabilities.

Additionally, Anthropic will utilize custom semiconductors designed by AWS to train the fundamental models that serve as the backbone for its AI applications. Foundation models, which are expansive AI programs trained on vast datasets, are adaptable to a wide array of tasks. Notably, Nvidia, a chip firm, has witnessed significant growth from the generative AI trend, showcasing the potential of graphics processing units in training extensive AI models.

This collaboration with Anthropic positions Amazon to demonstrate that there are viable alternative chips for AI applications beyond those offered by Nvidia. AWS customers will benefit from this collaboration by gaining the ability to leverage Anthropic’s AI models through Amazon Bedrock, a service that facilitates the creation of generative AI applications using existing models in the cloud, bypassing the need to train their own models.