Anthropic secures $4 billion from Amazon to fund its AI operations
Anthropic, an AI startup, has secured up to $4 billion in investment from Amazon. The move is seen as a push by the e-commerce giant to compete with other tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, Nvidia, and Meta in the rapidly expanding AI sector. Initially, Amazon will invest $1.25 billion for a minority stake in Anthropic, which operates an AI-powered chatbot similar to Google’s Bard and Microsoft’s OpenAI. As part of the agreement, Amazon can increase its investment in Anthropic to a total of $4 billion.
Earlier this year, Anthropic, which has Google as one of its investors, aims to raise $5 billion within the next 24 months, as reported by TechCrunch. The company has recently launched its first premium chatbot subscription plan, Claude 2, for consumers. Anthropic intends to create a “frontier model,” called “Claude-Next,” which is ten times more proficient than current AI technology. TechCrunch obtained a 2023 investor deck from Anthropic earlier this year, providing insights into their upcoming plans.
Anthropic, a startup focused on developing cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) models, has announced that it will require a billion dollars in funding over the next 18 months to continue its work. Microsoft has invested as much as $11 billion in OpenAI, which is a testament to the potential of this technology.
To further its efforts, Anthropic has secured Amazon as a strategic investor, providing the capital and computing power necessary to build and sell future AI models. Under the agreement, Anthropic will primarily use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for mission-critical tasks, including safety research and model development. AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips will be used to build, train, and deploy these models.
Amazon’s CEO, Andy Jassy, stated that the company hopes to “improve many customer experiences, short and long-term, through our deeper collaboration” with Anthropic. With this partnership, Anthropic is well-positioned to make significant strides in AI.
Amazon has introduced a new managed service called Amazon Bedrock that allows companies to use various foundation models to build generative AI applications. Their AI training chip, AWS Trainium, has also been well-received by customers. Furthermore, Amazon’s collaboration with Anthropic is expected to provide even more value to these two capabilities. Anthropic, which has raised $2.7 billion to date and was valued at $5 billion in May, is backed by companies such as Salesforce, Sound Ventures, and Menlo Ventures. The collaboration with Anthropic will allow Amazon to build a more substantial presence in the AI industry. According to Anthropic’s CEO, Dario Amodei, there are no barriers to his company’s technology.
Over the past decade, there has been a significant increase in the scale used to train neural nets. As a result, there has been a notable improvement in their performance. This trend is expected to continue in the next few years, with more impressive results anticipated.
Anthropic has committed to providing AWS customers worldwide with access to future generations of its foundation models. These models will be available via Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed service offering secure access to the industry’s top foundation models. Additionally, Anthropic will provide early access to unique features for model customization and fine-tuning capabilities.
Training state-of-the-art models requires substantial resources, including computing power and research programs. Amazon’s investment and provision of AWS Trainium and Inferentia technology will ensure that Anthropic is well-equipped to continue advancing AI safety and research. The company is excited to collaborate with Amazon to responsibly scale the adoption of Claude and deliver safe AI cloud technologies to organizations globally.