Amazon and AI powerhouse Anthropic have bolstered their collaboration with a new $4 billion cash infusion from Amazon’s end. This landmark investment pushes Amazon’s total backing of Anthropic to an unprecedented $8 billion, marking it the largest venture investment ever recorded. This solidifies Amazon Web Services (AWS) as Anthropic’s primary cloud and training partner, a strategic decision poised to accelerate the creation of cutting-edge AI systems.
Founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei in 2021, Anthropic has experienced meteoric growth, securing over $7.3 billion in funding in just the past year. Their collaboration with AWS aims to enhance the AI training hardware, Trainium, optimizing both hardware and software for faster and more cost-efficient model development.
Also central to this partnership is the advancement of Anthropic’s AI model, Claude. Anthropic’s Claude is available on AWS through Amazon Bedrock, a managed service offering a lineup of high-performing foundation models via a single API. Competitors such as Cohere, Meta, Mistral AI, and Stability AI are also part of the Bedrock offerings.
This substantial investment is Amazon’s second in Anthropic in the past year. Earlier in March, Amazon invested $2.75 billion to strengthen its competitive stance against other AI giants like Google and Microsoft through innovations like the AI chatbot Claude. Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Data and AI at AWS, emphasized the transformative potential of generative AI, noting that the collaboration with Anthropic aims to elevate customer experiences significantly.
