Amazon to invest another $4 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropic

Amazon announced today that it’s pumping different $4 cardinal into Claude AI shaper Anthropic, bringing its full backing magnitude to $8 billion. This latest circular follows $1.25 cardinal past September and different $2.75 cardinal successful March.

Along with the money, Amazon wrote successful its blog station that Amazon Web Services (AWS) would beryllium named Anthropic’s “primary training partner” and that the OpenAI rival would usage Trainium and Inferentia chips for aboriginal models.

The concern and deeper concern align with previous reporting by Reuters that Claude volition powerfulness Amazon’s caller Alexa dependable assistant. The improved Alexa — the merchandise of which has been delayed — reportedly performed amended with Claude than it did erstwhile utilizing Amazon’s in-house model. The merchandise of the revamped Alexa diagnostic is present slated for 2025.

Amazon is astatine hazard of falling further down successful the AI arms contention compared to competitors similar Microsoft and OpenAI. In the caller mentation of Alexa, Amazon promised a much conversational tone, akin to OpenAI’s ChatGPT dependable mode — but immoderate beta users reported slow, stilted, and unhelpful responses. It besides seemingly has occupation turning connected the lights.