Amazon.com
is making a play to keep up with its Big Tech rivals in the artificial-intelligence race.
Amazon
(ticker: AMZN) will invest up to $4 billion in AI start-up Anthropic, a rival to ChatGPT creator OpenAI, the company said Monday.
Amazon’s
cloud customers will get early access to Anthropic’s technology through
Amazon
Bedrock, the company’s AI platform for businesses. The company said Anthropic will use Amazon Web Services’ in-house chips to build, train, and deploy its AI software. It will make AWS its primary cloud provider.
Amazon will take a minority stake in the AI start-up as part of the deal.
The arrangement follows
Microsoft
‘s (MSFT) multibillion-dollar, multiyear investment in OpenAI.
Alphabet
‘s (GOOGL) Google, another major player in the intensifying battle for AI supremacy, also is an investor in Anthropic.
Anthropic launched its AI assistant Claude, a competitor to ChatGPT, in 2021. The company was founded in the same year by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, former employees of OpenAI.
Anthropic has said its Claude 2 AI model is especially adept at securely processing large amounts of technical information and generating content on complex subjects, including finance, law, and programming.
In the blog post announcement on Monday, Anthropic shared how several companies use their AI model with Amazon’s cloud computing services. The start-up said LexisNexis Legal & Professional was deploying the Claude 2 model to offer easier-to-utilize conversational search, legal summarization, and drafting of documents.
According to Anthropic, the investment firm Bridgewater Associates has been developing an AI assistant to generate advanced charts and calculate financial indicators. Finally, Lonely Planet has been leveraging the startup’s technology to create travel recommendations.
The AI boom is gathering speed. While Microsoft has made much of the early running, it is clear that Amazon has no intention of being left behind.
Write to Callum Keown at callum.keown@barrons.com and Tae Kim at tae.kim@barrons.com
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