Amazon to invest $4bn in ChatGPT rival Anthropic

The company will gain a minority ownership position in Anthropic as part of the deal

Amazon aims to improve customer experiences with its investment in Anthropic. Reuters

Amazon will invest $4 billion in US artificial intelligence start-up and ChatGPT rival Anthropic as it seeks to strengthen its position in the technology, which is booming across the globe.

The world's biggest e-commerce company will get a minority ownership position in Anthropic as part of the deal, Seattle-based Amazon said in a statement on Monday.

The agreement will also see Anthropic move most of its software to AWS data centres, meaning it will become its primary cloud provider for mission critical workloads, including safety research and future foundation model development, it said.

Anthropic will use AWS' Trainium and Inferentia chips – used in machine learning and deep learning training – to build, train and deploy its future foundation models, it said.

San Francisco-based Anthropic is led by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, chief executive and president of the company, respectively – who both previously worked for OpenAI.

The company's corporate governance structure will remain unchanged, the company said in a separate statement.

Both companies will also collaborate in the development of future Trainium and Inferentia technology.

"We believe we can help improve many customer experiences, short and long-term, through our deeper collaboration [with Anthropic],” said Andy Jassy, chief executive of Amazon.

The investment will give Anthropic the financial backing it needs to fund the training of its AI models, which are designed to replicate human intelligence and powers the latest iteration of AI technology.

Amazon’s investment into a ChatGPT rival "reinforces why almost all investors should have some AI exposure in their investment mix", Nigel Green, chief executive of asset management firm deVere Group, wrote in a note.

"AI is going to reshape whole industries and fuel innovation – and this makes it crucial for investors to pay attention and why almost all investors need exposure to AI investments in their portfolios."

AI has already been used by businesses for a long time to support their operations and serve their customers.

But all this changed when Microsoft-backed OpenAI released ChatGPT, which became a sensation because of its humanlike conversations.

This has triggered a race among companies, placing big bets on the growing emerging technology seen to reshape businesses and society.

Microsoft earlier this year announced the third phase of its investment in OpenAI, which was reportedly worth $10 billion.

Google, meanwhile, redoubled its commitment to artificial intelligence by putting in place the most advanced versions of the technology on its user-focused platforms, including Gmail, Meet and Chat.

Oracle has also announced that it will be releasing its first generative AI services on its Fusion Cloud platform in the next two quarters.

Investors have put more than $4.2 billion into generative AI start-ups in 2021 and 2022 through 215 deals after interest surged in 2019, data from CB Insights showed.

"By significantly expanding our partnership, we can unlock new possibilities for organisations of all sizes, as they deploy Anthropic’s safe, state-of-the-art AI systems together with AWS’s leading cloud technology," Mr Amodei said.