The Low-Down: Anthropic's Multi-Billion Dollar Deal With Amazon Challenges OpenAI

Anthropic has signed a series of strategic alliances with Amazon, Google and Broadcom, which gives the AI company access to computing power while providing the other firms greater ability to use its AI.

But the Amazon deal, which came after the other two, also begins to shape global AI alliances that will see OpenAI-Microsoft and the Chinese AI companies facing off against each other and against the Anthropic group as a potential harbinger of future competitive strength. The relative success of the various AI models will be determined by the utility of the AI as well as the financial, computing and marketing power of each. This latest alliance gives Anthropic, which was started by executives who departed OpenAI, an ability to challenge OpenAI, because of the growing success of its model.JL

Sean McClain and Kate Clark report in the Wall Street Journal:

Amazon will invest an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, part of a broadening partnership that will see the two tech companies collaborate more closely. Amazon's total investment could be as high as $25 billion. Anthropic, which has been hampered by a shortage of the computing power needed to serve its popular AI models, agreed to purchase $100 billion of Amazon’s cloud services. Anthropic said it would make use of 5 gigawatts’ worth of Amazon’s AI chips. Anthropic also expanded its partnership with Google and Broadcom, adding multiple gigawatts of capacity on their TPU chips. Recent months have seen rapid growth of the company’s coding tool Claude Code. Anthropic said this month that its revenue run-rate had reached $30 billion, far exceeding its earlier expectations for the year.

Amazon AMZN 0.66%increase; green up pointing triangle said Monday that it would invest an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, part of a broadening partnership that will see the two tech companies collaborate more closely.
Amazon said its total investment could be as high as $25 billion if the partnership hits certain commercial milestones. As part of the agreement, Anthropic, which has increasingly been hampered by a shortage of the computing power needed to serve its popular artificial intelligence models, agreed to purchase more than $100 billion of Amazon’s cloud services. Anthropic said it would make use of 5 gigawatts’ worth of Amazon’s AI chips as part of the agreement.
The investment comes as competition in the AI industry heats up ahead of the expected public offerings of Anthropic and its rival OpenAI.
Amazon is rapidly expanding spending on new data centers and chip designs. The company has said that it would spend $200 billion on capital expenditures this year, much of it on AI-related investments, including new data centers. The pace of investment has led some analysts to question whether Amazon could justify the spending with enough new business. Amazon shares rose nearly 3% in after-hours trading on Monday.
Amazon’s partnership with Anthropic started in 2023 when the e-commerce and cloud computing giant invested $4 billion in the AI startup. Today, Anthropic is both a strategic investment and a key customer for Amazon Web Services and the company’s AI chips, dubbed Trainium.
In October, Amazon opened one of the largest AI data centers for Anthropic in Indiana called Project Rainier, which is powered by half-a-million Trainium 2 chips. Ultimately, that number is set to double, Amazon has said.
The added computing capacity could help relieve pressure on Anthropic, recently valued at $380 billion, as demand for its AI models surges.
The company has faced a computing power crunch that has led to outages, throttling and slower performance for its Claude AI model. Some customers have opted to switch to other AI models out of frustration with the disruptions, the Journal has reported.
Earlier this month, Anthropic also expanded its partnership with Alphabet’s Google and Broadcom, adding multiple gigawatts of capacity on their TPU chips.
Recent months have seen rapid growth of the company’s coding tool Claude Code. Anthropic said this month that its revenue run-rate had reached $30 billion, far exceeding its earlier expectations for the year.