Amazon's $4 Billion AI Investment Plan: What You Need to Know

Amazon on Monday announced that it will invest up to $4 billion in artificial intelligence firm Anthropic as it moves to take a minority ownership position in the company.

This shows Amazon’s readiness to push towards AI as it looks to overtake Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google.

Anthropic was founded two years ago by OpenAI research operatives and recently released its new AI chatbot called Claude 2.

CNBC reports that Amazon is looking to capitalize on the hype and promise of so-called generative AI, which includes technology like OpenAI’s ChatGPT as well as Anthropic’s Claude chatbots.

It also stated that on Monday, the two firms collaborated to advance generative AI, while the startup chose to use Amazon Web Services as its cloud provider. Anthropic stated that it will provide AWS customers with early access to unique features for model customization and fine-tuning capabilities.

It also showed that Anthropic will make use of the custom AWS-designed semiconductors to train the fundamental models that support its AI applications. Foundation models are known as vast AI programs that store lots of data and can also be adapted to solve a lot of difficult tasks.

CNBC report says

• This year, chip firm Nvidia is the chip firm that has seen the biggest gains from the generative AI boom. Nvidia’s key product is a type of semiconductor known as a graphics processing unit, which can be used to train huge AI models. At one point, Nvidia’s stock had rallied more than 200% as the company smashed through financial forecasts on the rising adoption of AI.

• To an extent, Amazon’s deal with Anthropic aims to show that there are alternative chips that can be used for AI applications.

• AWS customers will be able to build on Anthropic’s AI models via Amazon Bedrock, a service that lets customers build generative AI applications in the cloud via existing models rather than train their own models.

Amazon, on the other hand, is planning on positioning itself as an all-inclusive store for AI. It has already designed its chips for training huge AI models—through Amazon Bedrock, customers can design their personal generative AI applications using already existing models, which all run on the Amazon cloud. The company also said that it sells its own AI applications.

CNBC wrote that Anthropic already counts some high-profile backers, including Google and Salesforce Ventures. This support comes as tech giants continue to make massive bets on AI companies, a move sparked by Microsoft’s multi-billion dollar investment in ChatGPT maker OpenAI in January.