SEATTLE - Amazon said on March 27 that it had added US$2.75 billion (S$3.7 billion) to its investment in Anthropic, a start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google in the race to build cutting-edge artificial intelligence (AI) systems.
Six months ago, Amazon invested US$1.25 billion in Anthropic, making the San Francisco start-up Amazon’s most important AI partner. Amazon said at the time that it had the option to bring its total investment to US$4 billion. It had until the end of March to do so, according to financial filings.
Still, the additional investment shows the enormous resources that tech companies are pouring into AI and is indicative of how much financial support Anthropic needs to keep pace with its peers.
“We believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences, and look forward to what’s next,” Amazon executive Swami Sivasubramanian said in a blog post announcing the investment.
While Anthropic gets closer to Amazon, it has shed a bulk of the holdings of a controversial investor.
Last week, a United States federal judge granted approval for bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX to sell its stake in Anthropic. In 2021, FTX invested US$500 million in the AI start-up, making up a stake of about 8 per cent.
The value of that investment has since ballooned. Anthropic’s valuation tripled to US$15 billion in just a year.
Anthropic was started in 2021 by a group of researchers from OpenAI, the company that created the ChatGPT chatbot. At the time, many of those researchers were concerned about OpenAI growing closer to Microsoft in a partnership eventually worth US$13 billion.
Anthropic has steadily raised funds because developing the foundational systems for generative AI requires deep pockets, both to hire staff and to secure computing power.
The Amazon investment in Anthropic is not just a simple equity stake. Like Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI, it includes gaining access to AI systems and commitments to provide computing power. But it stops short of the high-value acquisitions that could trigger an antitrust review. The US Federal Trade Commission has begun an inquiry to see if these kinds of large AI deals hamper competition.
In a key part of the partnership, Anthropic agreed to build its AI using specialised computer chips designed by Amazon. Amazon has said it hopes Anthropic will help its efforts to meet the cutting-edge demands of AI as well as collaborate on designs of specialised chips.
Amazon also gets an early shot at making Anthropic’s AI models available to customers of its cloud computing service, and in March announced that it would provide access to the most powerful Anthropic models, known as Claude 3.
The bankruptcy estate of FTX agreed to sell about two-thirds of its shares in the start-up for US$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 quantitative trading firm Jane Street and the Ford Foundation, a philanthropic group.
Mr Darren Walker, the foundation’s president, said in an interview that he viewed 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,” Mr Walker said. NYTIMES
