Anthropic, Amazon’s Biggest Venture Investment, Gets $2.75 Billion

(CTN News) – Artificial intelligence is Amazon’s biggest outside investment in three decades.

The company is investing $2.75 billion in Anthropic, a generative AI startup based in San Francisco. ChatGPT and OpenAI compete with its Claude chatbot.

Amazon will invest $4 billion, up from $1.25 billion announced earlier this year. Amazon’s second funding round.

Despite Amazon’s minority stake, it will not have a seat on the Anthropic board. A source says the company’s last valuation was $18.4 billion. $7.3 billion in funding deals closed by Anthropic last year. ChatGPT is directly competitive with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Claude 3 was launched just weeks after Amazon invested. Google’s Gemini Ultra and OpenAI’s GPT-4 were beaten by its most capable model. “Generative AI is poised to be the most transformative technology of our time, and we look forward to our strategic partnership with Anthropic to further improve our customers’ experiences.”

It’s the latest in a blitz of spending by cloud providers on AI. And it’s the second update in a week. Last week, cryptocurrency exchange FTX struck a deal with a group of buyers to sell a majority stake in Anthropic.

Nearly 700 generative AI deals were worth $29.1 billion in 2023. The first ChatGPT demonstration by OpenAI occurred in late 2022. Ninety-two percent of Fortune 500 companies have adopted the platform.

AWS doesn’t want to be caught off guard.

A symbiotic relationship. Anthropic will use AWS as its primary cloud provider. To build, test, and deploy its foundation models, Amazon chips will be used. Chips designed by Amazon may eventually compete with Nvidia.

Microsoft has also invested heavily in OpenAI. Microsoft’s OpenAI bet has jumped to $13 billion after the startup’s value topped $29 billion. In addition to Azure’s compute power, OpenAI also uses Microsoft’s cloud servers for success and new business.

Google Cloud, meanwhile, has also backed Anthropic. Up to $2 billion will be invested in Anthropic, with $500 million in cash and $1.5 billion over time. As well as Salesforce. As part of the new model suite, Anthropic offers photo and video capabilities for the first time. AI models are becoming increasingly complex and multimodal. Google recently pulled its AI image generator due to historical inaccuracies.

Claude 3 doesn’t generate images. Users can only upload images and other documents.

In an interview earlier this month, Anthropic’s co-founder Daniela Amodei said: “Of course, no model is perfect.”. “Our models are designed to be both capable and safe.”. The model might still just make mistakes sometimes.”. Rivian was Amazon’s largest venture investment before Anthropic. Strategically, too.

Antitrust scrutiny has increased scrutiny of these partnerships. A rise in venture-style investing has offset a drop in the Magnificent Seven acquisitions, according to Pitchbook.

In 2022, AI and machine learning investments reached $24.6 billion. Compared to 2022, 18 deals were made by Big Tech. The paranoia of investing in disruptors drives Pitchbook AI analyst Brendan Burke. Furthermore, they tend to invest in partners rather than competitors.”

AI spending sprees by Big Tech have been criticized. Cloud startups have been accused of reinvesting money in their cloud businesses. “Goose your own revenue,” Gurley said.

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