Amazon Spends $2.75 Billion on AI Startup Anthropic in Its Largest Venture Investment Yet

Amazon is making its largest outside investment in its three-decade history as it looks to gain an edge in the AI race. From a report: The tech giant said it will spend another $2.75 billion backing Anthropic, a San Francisco-based startup that's widely viewed as a frontrunner in generative artificial intelligence. Its foundation model and chatbot Claude competes with OpenAI and ChatGPT. The companies announced an initial $1.25 billion investment in September, and said at the time that Amazon would invest up to $4 billion. Wednesday's news marks Amazon's second tranche of that funding.

Amazon will maintain a minority stake in the company and won't have an Anthropic board seat, the company said. The deal was struck at the AI startup's last valuation, which was $18.4 billion, according to a source. Over the past year, Anthropic closed five different funding deals worth about $7.3 billion -- and with the new Amazon investment, the total exceeds $10 billion. The company's product directly competes with OpenAI's ChatGPT in both the enterprise and consumer worlds, and it was founded by ex-OpenAI research executives and employees.

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