Amazon has agreed to invest an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude model, bringing the tech giant’s total investment in the Seattle-area firm to $13 billion, the company announced Monday.
In return, Anthropic has committed to spending more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next decade, securing up to 5 gigawatts of new computing capacity to train and run Claude. The deal is structured partly around cloud infrastructure services rather than straight cash, mirroring an agreement Amazon struck with OpenAI just two months ago when it contributed $50 billion to a $110 billion funding round that valued ChatGPT’s maker at $730 billion.
At the centre of the Anthropic agreement are Amazon’s custom silicon chips, specifically its Graviton processor and its Trainium line of AI accelerator chips, which compete directly with Nvidia’s dominant offerings. The deal covers Trainium2 through Trainium4 chips, a notable detail given that Trainium4 is not yet commercially available. The most recent chip in the line, Trainium3, was released in December. Anthropic has also secured the option to purchase capacity on future Amazon chips as they become available, giving the company a long-term stake in Amazon’s hardware roadmap.
The announcement could serve as a prelude to a broader funding round. Venture capital firms have reportedly been circling Anthropic with offers that would value the company at $800 billion or more, which would make it one of the most valuable private companies in the world.
