Amazon Pumps $5B into Anthropic in $100B Cloud Deal
Amazon.com Inc. is investing an additional $5 billion in Anthropic PBC, and may inject $20 billion more over time, a deal that strengthens the companies’ connections in a rapidly evolving artificial intelligence industry. Anthropic, the creator of the Claude chatbot and coding tool, has announced plans to invest over $100 billion in Amazon’s cloud technologies and chips over the next decade, as stated in a recent announcement from the companies on Monday. Amazon shares experienced an increase of approximately 3 percent following the news in extended trading.
Amazon had already established itself as one of Anthropic’s most significant supporters, with previous investments amounting to $8 billion. The partnership has provided Amazon’s cloud business with a prominent artificial intelligence model and a significant customer for its proprietary Trainium line of AI chips. Anthropic, on the other hand, has been granted access to Amazon’s extensive list of corporate clients. According to the companies, more than 100,000 customers utilize Claude models on Amazon Web Services. Anthropic, established in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees, is anticipated to pursue an initial public offering as early as this year. The AI company has been striving to convince a greater number of businesses to invest in its software to alleviate the substantial expenses associated with developing the technology.
In February, Anthropic secured a $30 billion funding round that placed the San Francisco-based startup’s valuation at $380 billion. Since then, it has attracted investor offers exceeding a valuation of $800 billion. The agreement signifies Anthropic’s ongoing quest for the substantial processing power required to develop new iterations of Claude. Similar to OpenAI, Anthropic has established a number of agreements to obtain the essential chips and leased computing resources. Last week, Anthropic announced its decision to partner with Broadcom Inc. for the supply of chips utilizing Google’s tensor processing units, which compete with Amazon’s Trainium line. The partnership between the three companies will enable Anthropic to tap into approximately 3.5 gigawatts of computing power. In October, Anthropic confirmed its plan to acquire up to 1 million specialized AI chips from the Alphabet Inc. unit, a partnership valued at tens of billions of dollars.
In Monday’s announcement, Amazon stated it would supply Anthropic with chips — both for general computing and AI accelerators — to achieve approximately 5 gigawatts of power. Anthropic has enjoyed a successful year, marked by the popularity of its Claude Code AI tool. However, the company finds itself in a contentious dispute with the US government regarding AI safeguards. This ongoing conflict has prompted legal action from Anthropic, which asserts that the situation poses a threat to its business operations. Amazon stated that it continues to be a minority investor and is not represented on Anthropic’s board or trust. Amazon stated that the magnitude of future investments is linked to “certain commercial milestones.”
