AI Game Heats Up with Amazon Investing $4 Billion in Anthropic

On Friday, Amazon announced investing an additional 4 billion dollars in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup founded by ex-OpenAI research executives.

Amazon has agreed to invest up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic — a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude. The new investment gives the Seattle-based e-commerce and cloud titan a minority stake in Anthropic. The immediate investment is $1.25 billion, with either party having the right to trigger another $2.75 billion in funding, Reuters reported. As part of the deal, Anthropic will now use Amazon Web Services data centers, as well as AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to build, train and deploy its models. Anthropic did not announce a new valuation with the round.

The new investment is just the latest in what has become a fundraising spree for Anthropic this year. In February, it was reported that Google had invested between $300 million and $400 million in the startup. In May, the company raised a $450 million Series C led by Spark Capital with participation from Google, Salesforce Ventures, Sound Ventures, Zoom Ventures, and others. Anthropic did not release a valuation, but the round came after reports it was raising a round at a pre-investment valuation of $4.1 billion.

Finally, just last month, Anthropic raised a $100 million round from SK Telecom. Amazon’s investment would be the second biggest announced this year if the $4 billion is reached. The deal lags behind only Microsoft’s massive $10 billion investment in OpenAI back in January. The deal is just the latest example of big tech investing big into generative AI. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, and even Salesforce have all invested billions of dollars into AI startups — either directly from the company or through their respective VC arms. The news of the Anthropic round also comes just about a week after The Financial Times reported that SoftBank is considering investing in ChatGPT creator OpenAI or one of its competitors.

Amazon does not have a seat on Anthropic’s board. News of Amazon’s additional investment comes one month after Anthropic announced a significant milestone for the company: AI agents that can use a computer to complete complex tasks like a human would. Anthropic’s new Computer Use capability, part of its two newest AI models, allows its tech to interpret what’s on a computer screen, select buttons, enter text, navigate websites, and execute tasks through any software and real-time internet browsing.

The tool can ‘use computers in basically the same way that we do,’ Jared Kaplan, Anthropic’s chief science officer, told CNBC in an interview last month, adding it can do tasks with ‘tens or even hundreds of steps.’ Amazon had early access to the tool, Anthropic told CNBC at the time, and early customers and beta testers included Asana, Canva, and Notion. The company had been working on the tool since early this year, according to Kaplan.

In September, Anthropic rolled out Claude Enterprise, its biggest new product since its chatbot’s debut, designed for businesses looking to integrate Anthropic’s AI. In June, the company debuted its more powerful AI model, Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and in May, it rolled out its ‘Team’ plan for smaller businesses. Last year, Google committed to invest $2 billion in Anthropic, after previously confirming it had taken a 10% stake in the startup alongside a large cloud contract between the two companies.