Last updated on April 8th, 2024 at 10:34 am

The additional funding will increase the technology giant’s total investment in Anthropic, a rival of OpenAI, to $4 billion

Amazon announced on Wednesday that it will invest an additional $2.75 billion in Anthropic, bringing its total investment in the artificial intelligence startup to $4 billion. The technology giant will retain a minority stake in Anthropic, which is based in San Francisco and is a competitor of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT.

Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of data and AI at Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon’s cloud-computing subsidiary, stated, “Generative AI is poised to be the most transformational technology of our time, and we believe our strategic collaboration with Anthropic will further improve our customers’ experiences. We look forward to what’s next.”

Amazon initially invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic in September and indicated at that time that it planned to invest up to $4 billion.

The two companies are collaborating on the development of foundation models, which are fundamental to the generative AI systems that have garnered global attention. As part of the agreement, Anthropic will primarily utilize AWS as its cloud provider and leverage Amazon’s custom chips for building, training, and deploying AI models.

Additionally, Anthropic will offer AWS customers, primarily businesses, access to models through an Amazon service called Bedrock. Amazon noted in its announcement on Wednesday that companies such as Delta Air Lines and Siemens are already utilizing Bedrock to access Anthropic’s AI models.

This investment exemplifies the trend of major tech firms investing in artificial intelligence startups, reflecting the increasing public and business interest in the technology. Earlier this year, US antitrust regulators stated that they were scrutinizing these investments.