Achi news desk-
Amazon said on Wednesday it has added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic, a start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google in the race to build innovative AI systems.
Six months ago, Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, making the San Francisco startup Amazon’s most important AI partner. Amazon said at the time that it had the option to bring its total investment to $4 billion. He had until the end of March to do so, according to financial filings.
Still, the additional investment shows the massive resources tech companies are pouring into AI and is a sign of how much financial support Anthropic needs to keep up with its peers.
“We believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further enhance our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next,” Amazon executive Swami Sivasubramanian said in a blog post announcing the investment.
While Anthropic is getting closer to Amazon, it has shed some controversial investor holdings. Last week, a federal judge gave approval to bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX to sell its stake in Anthropic. In 2021, FTX invested $500 million in the AI ​​startup, forming a stake of around 8 percent.
The value of that investment has increased enormously since then. Anthropic’s valuation tripled to $15 billion in just one year, The New York Times reported in February.
Anthropic was started in 2021 by a group of researchers from OpenAI, the company that created the chatbot ChatGPT. At the time, many of those researchers worried about OpenAI growing closer to Microsoft in an eventual $13 billion partnership.
Anthropic has raised funds gradually because developing basic systems for productive AI requires deep pockets, to hire staff and to secure computing power.
Amazon’s investment in Anthropic is not just a simple equity stake. Like Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, it includes access to AI systems and commitments to provide computing power. But it lacks the high-value acquisitions that could trigger an antitrust review. The Federal Trade Commission has begun an investigation into whether these types of large AI deals are hindering competition. (The Times has sued OpenAI and Microsoft for copyright infringement of news content related to AI systems.)
In a key part of the partnership, Anthropic agreed to build its AI using specialized computer chips designed by Amazon. Amazon has said it hopes Anthropic will help its efforts to meet innovative AI demands as well as collaborate on specialized chip designs.
Amazon is also getting an early look at making Anthropic’s AI models available to customers of its cloud computing service, and this month announced that it would provide access to the most powerful Anthropic models, known as Claude 3.
FTX’s bankruptcy estate agreed to sell about two-thirds of its shares in the startup for $884 million. The majority of the stake went to ATIC Third International Investment, a company linked to a sovereign wealth fund in the United Arab Emirates.
Other buyers included the quantitative trading firm Jane Street and the Ford Foundation, a philanthropic group. Darren Walker, the organization’s president, said in an interview that he sees Anthropic as an important competitor to OpenAI.
“The fact that Anthropic has emerged and will be a strong competitor is a good thing for the markets, and it’s a good thing for the public and the public interest,” said Mr Walker.
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