San Francisco (AFP) – Amazon is doubling its investment in Anthropic to $8 billion in a deepened collaboration on artificial intelligence, the companies said Friday. The e-commerce and technology behemoth will remain a minority investor in Anthropic, having pumped an initial $4 billion into the artificial intelligence developer late last year and becoming its primary cloud computing provider.
“The response from AWS customers who are developing generative AI applications powered by Anthropic in Amazon Bedrock has been remarkable,” said Matt Garman, chief of AWS cloud computing division. “We’ll keep pushing the boundaries of what customers can achieve with generative AI technologies.”
Amazon is investing the additional $4 billion in Anthropic as part of an expanded alliance that includes working together on “Trainium” hardware to optimize machine learning, according to the companies. “We’re looking forward to working with Amazon to train and power our most advanced AI models using AWS Trainium, and helping to unlock the full potential of their technology,” said Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei.
The announcement came just days after Britain’s competition regulator cleared Google-parent Alphabet’s investment in Anthropic, following a probe. The Competition and Markets Authority concluded that the big tech giant had not acquired “material influence” over Anthropic as a result of the deal, which was reported to have cost $2 billion.
The British regulator is one of several global regulators concerned with reining in big tech companies and their partnerships with AI firms. In September, the CMA cleared Amazon’s initial investment in Anthropic, saying it did not believe that “a relevant merger situation has been created.”
© 2024 AFP
