Amazon Considers Major Investment In AI Firm Anthropic

According to TechCrunch, Amazon is contemplating a significant increase in its investment in Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI. The tech giant is reportedly in discussions to invest several billion dollars in Anthropic, marking its first financial commitment to the company since a $4 billion agreement was reached last year. This potential new investment is structured similarly to the previous one, but with a notable difference. Amazon is pushing for Anthropic to utilize Amazon-developed silicon, hosted on Amazon Web Services, for training its artificial intelligence systems. However, Anthropic has shown a preference for using Nvidia chips. Despite this, the financial offer from Amazon might be too substantial for Anthropic to decline. Earlier this year, Anthropic projected that it would expend over $2.7 billion in 2024 as it continues to develop and expand its AI products. The company has been in talks for several months to secure new funding at a valuation of $40 billion, according to The Information. This places considerable pressure on Anthropic to finalize a deal soon. To date, Anthropic has successfully raised $9.7 billion, which is nearly half of the $21.9 billion raised by its rival, OpenAI. The ongoing negotiations and potential investment from Amazon could significantly impact Anthropic's growth trajectory and its competitive stance in the AI industry.