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Amazon.com Inc. is investing an additional US$5 billion in Anthropic PBC and may inject US$20 billion more over time, a deal that strengthens ties in in an increasingly competitive artificial intelligence race.
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The deal was struck at a valuation of US$350 billion, not including the new funding, Anthropic said. That signals Amazon negotiated more preferable terms than other investors recently. Anthropic clinched a US$30 billion funding round in February that valued the San Francisco-based startup at US$380 billion, and has since drawn investor offers at a valuation of over US$800 billion.
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Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot and coding tool, plans to spend more than US$100 billion over the next 10 years on Amazon’s cloud technologies and chips, the companies said in a statement on Monday. Amazon shares gained about three per cent on the news in extended trading.
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Amazon was already one of Anthropic’s biggest backers, with prior investments totaling US$8 billion. For Amazon, the partnership has given its cloud business a leading AI model and a major customer for its home-built Trainium line of chips. Anthropic, meanwhile, has had access to Amazon’s massive roster of corporate clients. More than 100,000 customers run Claude models on Amazon Web Services, the companies said.
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Anthropic, founded in 2021 by several former employees of OpenAI, is widely expected to conduct an initial public offering as soon as this year. The AI company has been racing to persuade more businesses to pay for its software to help offset the immense cost of developing the technology.
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The agreement is the latest sign of Anthropic’s hunger for the immense processing power necessary to build new versions of Claude. Like OpenAI, Anthropic has inked a series of deals to secure the necessary chips and rented computing power. Anthropic last week said it would enlist Broadcom Inc. to supply chips based on Google’s tensor processing units, a rival to Amazon’s Trainium line. The collaboration among the three companies will let Anthropic access about 3.5 gigawatts’ worth of computing power. Anthropic in October confirmed it would grab as many as 1 million of the specialized AI chips from the Alphabet Inc. unit, a tie-up worth tens of billions of dollars.
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In Monday’s announcement, Amazon said it would provide Anthropic with chips — both for general computing and AI accelerators — to reach about 5 gigawatts of power.
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Though Anthropic has been on a winning streak this year with popular products including its Claude Code AI tool, it’s also locked in a dispute with the US government over AI safeguards — a fight that has led to legal action from Anthropic and that the company has said threatens its business.
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Amazon said it remains a minority investor, and is not represented on Anthropic’s board or trust. The size of the future investments are tied to “certain commercial milestones,” Amazon said.
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With assistance from Vlad Savov
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English (US)