Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei in 2021, will proceed using Google’s cloud services together with Amazon’s infrastructure. The UK Competition and Markets Authority reviewed Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic earlier this yr and ultimately determined it didn’t have jurisdiction to analyze further, clearing the way in which for the partnership to proceed.
Shaking the cash tree
Amazon’s renewed investment in Anthropic also comes during a time of intense competition between cloud providers Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. Each company has made strategic partnerships with AI model developers—Microsoft with OpenAI (to the tune of $13 billion), Google with Anthropic (committing $2 billion over time), for instance. These investments also encourage the usage of each company’s data centers as demand for AI grows.
The dimensions of those investments reflects the present state of AI development. OpenAI raised an extra $6.6 billion in October, potentially valuing the corporate at $157 billion. Anthropic has been eyeballing a $40 billion valuation during a recent investment round.
Training and running AI models may be very expensive. While Google and Meta have their very own profitable mainline businesses that may subsidize AI development, dedicated AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic need constant infusions of money to remain afloat—in other words, this would possibly not be the last time we hear of billion-dollar-scale AI investments from Big Tech.
