Amazon (AMZN) is investing $2.75 billion U.S. in Anthropic, a San Francisco-based start-up company that’s widely viewed as a leader in artificial intelligence (A.I.).
This is the second major investment that Amazon has made in Anthropic. In September 2023, the e-commerce giant announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in the A.I. start-up.
The $4 billion U.S. allocated to Anthropic marks the biggest outside investment ever for Amazon, which is looking to gain an edge in the race to develop and monetize generative A.I. technologies.
Anthropic’s team is viewed as a global leader in A.I. and the company’s chatbot called Claude competes directly against rival start-up OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Anthropic has been valued at $18.4 billion U.S. and was founded by a former OpenAI research executive.
Under the funding terms, Amazon maintains a minority stake in Anthropic and won’t have an Anthropic board seat.
Amazon’s investment comes weeks after Anthropic debuted Claude 3, its newest A.I. model that the company says is its fastest and most powerful to date.
Anthropic has said that Claude 3 outperformed OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Gemini Ultra on industry benchmark tests such as reasoning and basic math.
Amazon is the latest technology giant and cloud computer provider to invest in A.I. as companies compete to stay ahead in the race to develop artificial intelligence.
The stock of Amazon has risen 85% in the last 12 months to trade at $179.83 U.S. per share.
