- Anthropic is an AI research company founded in 2021.
- The company was founded by former senior members of OpenAI.
- E-commerce leader Amazon said it will invest up to $4 billion and take a minority ownership stake in the company.
Amazon’s race to catch up with rivals such as Microsoft and Google in AI isn’t letting up. The company said on Monday (Sept. 25) it will invest up to $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic.
The e-commerce giant will initially invest $1.25 billion for a minority stake with an option to increase its investment to a total of $4 billlion.
Anthropic operates an AI-powered, text analyzing chatbot like Google’s Bard and OpenAI which has raised as much as $11 billion over the years.
As part of the deal, Anthropic will use Amazon’s cloud giant AWS as primary cloud provider while Amazon’s employees and cloud customers will gain early access to technology from the AI company.
Although there was no mention of the valuation at which Amazon is acquiring shares in the company, it was last valued at about $5 billion in May this year when it secured $450 million in a funding round.