Amazon completes $4 billion deal with Anthropic, deepening strategic AI partnership

Amazon completed an investment deal with AI firm Anthropic after injecting another $2.75 billion into the company on March 27.

The latest investment follows $1.25 billion given to the company in September 2023 as part of a $4 billion deal. The deal provides Amazon with minority ownership in Anthropic.

Under the deal, the two companies have entered a strategic collaboration, including making Anthropic’s AI models accessible via Amazon Bedrock. Additionally, Anthropic will use AWS for some of its operations and the AWS Trainium and Inferentia microchips to power some of its activities.

Dr. Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of Data and AI at AWS, said that Amazon has a “notable history with Anthropic” and that the two firms have helped organizations worldwide use AI.

Sivasubramanian called Anthropic’s work with generative AI “visionary” and the “most transformative technology of our time,” promising that the collaboration will improve customer experiences.

Anthropic itself acknowledged its ongoing partnership with Amazon on March 20, emphasizing a role for the professional services company Accenture. It said that more than 1,400 Accenture engineers will be trained as specialists using Anthropic models on AWS.

The investment will significantly increase Anthropic’s finances. In December 2023, the company had a valuation of $18 billion following a funding round led by Menlo Ventures.

Anthropic has recently attracted attention for its previous ties to the failed crypto exchange FTX. FTX reached a deal in bankruptcy court to sell its stake in Anthropic for $884 million on March 22, with most of the sale going toward the UAE sovereign wealth fund Mubadala, as previously expected.

Anthropic is best known for its AI chatbot, Claude. The company released version 3 of Claude in early March and claimed superior performance over some competitors.

The firm is also known for being founded by former OpenAI employees and for its more transparent approach to AI safety.

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