Amazon-backed Anthropic secures an additional $4 billion in funding, solidifying its position as OpenAI’s closest rival. Notably, the startup has pledged to prioritize Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant’s cloud computing arm, for the deployment of its flagship generative AI models.
Anthropic is collaborating with Annapurna Labs, the chipmaking arm of AWS, to design and develop subsequent iterations of accelerators – bespoke chips engineered by AWS specifically for training AI models.
“Our engineers collaborate closely with Annapurna’s chip design team to optimize the hardware for maximum computational efficiency, which we intend to utilize to train our most advanced foundation models.” “With AWS, we’re establishing a cutting-edge technological foundation, spanning silicon to sophisticated software programs, that will power the next generation of AI research and innovation.”
Amazon’s fresh injection of capital into Anthropic takes its total investment to $8 billion, with the e-commerce giant maintaining its minority stake in the company, according to Anthropic. To date, Anthropic has secured $13.7 billion in enterprise capital, according to Crunchbase data.
Amazon reportedly entered into discussions to invest billions in Anthropic, marking its initial financial commitment within the company since a deal struck last year. A report suggests that the newly secured funding has been structured similarly to its predecessor, but with a notable variation. Amazon demanded that Anthropic utilize silicon developed in-house by the company, hosting it on their cloud infrastructure, AWS.
Anthropic, a leading AI research organization, is accused of having a bias towards NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs). Despite the potential benefits of a promotion, the allure of a substantial sum may have been hard to resist. At the outset of the year, Anthropic projected that it would burn through over $2.7 billion in 2024 as it continued to scale up its AI products and services at a rapid pace. Anthropic has reportedly spent several months in negotiations over potential new funding at a valuation of approximately $40 billion, which undoubtedly placed considerable pressure on securing an agreement promptly.
Anthropic has noted significant expansion in its collaborations with Amazon Web Services (AWS) over the past few years. Through Amazon SageMaker, AWS’ cloud-based platform for building, deploying, and managing machine learning models, Anthropic’s Claude family of models are being leveraged by “tens of thousands” of companies, according to the blog post.
Recently, Anthropic partnered with AWS and Palantir to support the U.S. Intelligence and Protection Companies Enter Claude?
Amazon is reportedly partnering with AI startup Anthropic to enhance its existing customer offerings, building on the success of its acquisition of AWS. According to reports, Amazon is poised to integrate in-house fashion capabilities into its AI-powered Alexa system, following the company’s experience with technical hurdles while working with Anthropic.
In December, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sent letters to Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, requesting they clarify how their investments in startups like Anthropic affect the competitive landscape of generative artificial intelligence. Google has also invested substantially in Anthropic, committing a significant sum of $2 billion to the firm last October.
As Anthropic and rival AI labs, including OpenAI, further pioneer the frontiers of artificial intelligence, they have unveiled innovative capabilities such as Laptop Use, enabling their most advanced models to execute tasks autonomously on a PC. Despite facing a number of setbacks, the firm has still managed to navigate them successfully. The status of self-acceptance has risen significantly across various expressions recently. The long-anticipated rollout of the cutting-edge Claude model, Version 3.5 Opus, is now facing delays in its scheduled release.
