Amazon Considers Deepening AI Alliance with Anthropic Through Additional Multibillion-Dollar Investment

Amazon's $8 billion Anthropic investment rumors suggest it would rather sell AI infrastructure than compete with ChatGPT and Gemini

AWS is in prime position to power the AI revolution, rather than win it. Rumors indicate Amazon is reportedly considering an additional investment in AI firm Anthropic, which would bring its total stake to over $8 billion, according to Reuters. This would cement Amazon as the company's largest investor and signal that it remains more interested in profiting from the explosive growth of the AI industry than directly competing within it. Since the launch of several highly capable large language AI models in 2022, Amazon has been positioning itself as the prime resource to power the AI gold rush. Its Amazon Web Services (AWS) business is one of its most profitable components, earning close to $30 billion in Q1 2025 alone, providing data center hardware and software solutions all over the world. That's exactly what AI developers need - compute power, storage, and the ability to scale (not to mention lots of power) - and Amazon is in a prime position to supply it. A larger stake in Anthropic would make it clear that Amazon wants to support and monetize AI's growth, not necessarily lead it from the front. Meta is a clear example of what can happen to even deep-pocketed tech giants if they don't quite manage to keep up in this rapidly evolving space. It's trying to find a commercial avenue for its mix of customer-facing chatbots and open-source development tools, and not really nailing any of it. OpenAI is taking on Google head-on with its consumer chatbots, alternative search engine functions, and browser ventures. In comparison, Amazon's approach is more measured. It's building out infrastructure and laying the groundwork to expand into other portions of the burgeoning AI industry in the years to come. Its data centers already power a huge proportion of the world's cloud computing infrastructure, and those same servers will be able to power new AI models, too. It already has a whole pitch for those looking to invest. This positions Amazon as more of a seller of shovels in this AI gold rush than a firm looking to dig in the dirt itself. It's closer to some of the companies Nvidia has been partnering with on its big "AI Factory" venture, where some of its contemporary tech giants like Microsoft, Google, Meta, and X (via xAI), are hoping to come out ahead as the best, if not the definitive choice, for consumer and professional AI solutions. While those companies want to create AI products, it appears that Amazon wishes to power them. But that doesn't mean that Amazon has not been dipping its toes into the world of AI LLM development. Amazon's Nova-Experimental-Chat-05-14 AI model is placed at position 30 on Huggingface's LLM arena leaderboard, being beaten out by Google Gemini-2.0-Flash-Lite, DeepSeek-V3, and Anthropic's own Claude Sonnet 4 (20250514). It's a far cry from the apex of the leaderboard, where titans such as Google Gemini-2.5-Pro, OpenAI's O3, and DeepSeek-R1 currently sit. But that doesn't mean it'll stay that way forever. Although Amazon is rumored to be one of Nvidia's biggest GPU customers (alongside Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet/Google, and Tesla), it has been working on its own custom AI hardware for some time. It launched a pair of new processors to power portions of its AWS infrastructure in 2023, and made a veiled announcement of a super-powered version of its Trainium AI chips in mid-2024, with suggestions of future development plans beyond that. Although it seems unlikely that even a giant like Amazon could supplant Nvidia's entrenched position in AI training, where its hardware GPUs and CUDA software stack make it a near-monopoly, there is decidedly more competition to be had in the inference space. Although training takes huge superclusters of graphics cards and an enormously expensive investment in time and power, inference is far simpler, whilst still requiring lean, efficient hardware. Most importantly, inference requires scalability. That's something Amazon can offer in spades with its expansive AWS infrastructure. As a smaller venture, Groq announced its new datacenter investment in Europe with custom ASIC hardware; there is plenty of space for new, leaner, faster, bespoke hardware in AI inference, especially when combined with fast and responsive deployment. Amazon could drive its hardware endeavours in that direction in the years to come. It may even provide some of the base capabilities of next-generation AI agents and chatbots. It offers its own Nova foundational model to partners looking to further develop bespoke AI models. That allows Amazon to continue to develop the core capabilities of AI, without trying to craft the killer product that will survive in the hotly competitive world of consumer-facing applications. It's not hard to imagine a near future where Amazon sells everything a company needs to develop AI tools: the hardware, the datacenter infrastructure, and the foundational models and APIs. Like a model kit for AI development. That's not necessarily competition for Nvidia, but it's closer to that all-in-one AI platform vision its tech rivals are racing toward.

Amazon weighs further investment in Anthropic to deepen AI alliance

Amazon is weighing another multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic to deepen a strategic alliance that the tech companies believe will provide an edge in the global competition to profit from artificial intelligence. The Seattle-based cloud and ecommerce group has discussed plans to extend beyond the $8bn it has already ploughed into the San Francisco-based AI model builder, according to multiple people with knowledge of the talks. A new deal would further a relationship that -- according to interviews with more than a dozen Amazon and Anthropic executives, board members and investors -- has become vital to both their futures. The investment will ensure Amazon remains one of Anthropic's largest shareholders, as it seeks to position ahead of Google which has also invested more than $3bn, while providing a bulwark against a similar multibillion dollar partnership between Microsoft and OpenAI. It would also deepen ties as the pair collaborate on one of the world's largest data centre projects and team up on sales of Anthropic's technology to Amazon's cloud computing customers. "We quickly realised that we had many shared goals that were fundamentally critical," said Dan Grossman, vice-president of worldwide corporate development at Amazon. "The size of the [existing investment] represents our ambition." The strategy of close alignment comes with risks. Microsoft's $14bn investment into OpenAI helped the duo take an early lead in the race to commercialise AI products, but that alliance is under strain because of the ChatGPT maker's desire to move to a for-profit model. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by seven former OpenAI staff including siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei who left over ethical and safety concerns. It was initially a cloud computing customer before Amazon made a $1.25bn investment in September 2023. The Amazon deal ensured Anthropic had a "reliable source of compute and investment" at a time when Microsoft was locked into an agreement with OpenAI that would have precluded it from acting as a partner, according to one of the Seattle-based group's executives. In June, Amazon outlined the scale of its first site for "Project Rainier", a large-scale data centre programme that will help meet Anthropic's computing demands. Filled with the cloud providers' Trainium2 chips, the facilities in New Carlisle, Indiana will draw 2.2 gigawatts in power when completed, far surpassing the scale of Oracle's ambitious 1.2GW campus for OpenAI in Abilene, Texas. Amazon detailed at least $11bn in investment for a cluster of 16 data centres in Indiana last year, but plans for the site have since doubled. Mike Krieger, Anthropic's chief product officer, said it had worked "really closely" with Amazon to ensure that the Big Tech group's Trainium2 chips were suitable for its models. "The ability to have Amazon, who is developing their own chips and has the knowhow and expertise, open to our requirements, is massive," he said. The two companies are already discussing plans for future sites attached to Project Rainier. "The goal is to always be way ahead of what your customers are going to need," said David Brown, vice-president of compute at Amazon Web Services. "I call it the illusion of infinite capacity." While Amazon is developing its own in-house foundation models, it has sought closer ties to Anthropic than Google, which is focused on building its own powerful AI models called Gemini. The "fair value" of Amazon's investment in Anthropic is about $13.8bn, according to regulatory filings. Its backing came in the form of convertible notes, with only a portion turned into equity so far. Both tech giants' stakes are capped to keep them well below owning more than a third of Anthropic. They each have no voting rights, board seats or board observer seats. Google owns roughly 14 per cent, according to legal filings. Anthropic's most recent equity valuation is $61.5bn, set by investors in March, according to PitchBook. Amazon has made other investments in AI companies, including Hugging Face and Scale AI, but Anthropic is its third-largest investment to date behind MGM Studios and Whole Food Markets. Executives at the Seattle-based group are confident that the partnership with Anthropic would be more robust than Microsoft and OpenAI, as the start-up was structured as a public benefit corporation rather than a non-profit. Investors hold equity, unlike with OpenAI where they are beholden to a complex profit share agreement. Anthropic has previously said that it is "not owned or dominated by a single tech giant" and has chosen to remain independent. Yet, Amazon has manoeuvred itself to be named Anthropic's primary cloud and training partner. The model builder counts on Amazon's data centres and its specialised Trainium semiconductor chips to develop and deploy large language models. However, Anthropic also uses Google's custom AI accelerator chip -- a Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) called Trillium. Claude, meanwhile, is embedded in Amazon products such as its improved digital voice assistant Alexa+ and streaming service Prime Video. One Anthropic investor said Amazon's salespeople more clearly promoted the start-up's Claude series of models to its cloud computing customers than search giant Google. "Google pushes Gemini in every interaction, despite backing Anthropic. They will sell Gemini at every opportunity," added the start-up's investor. "Amazon's default is to sell Claude." Google has previously said that more than 4,000 customers used Anthropic's models on its cloud platform. The search giant declined to comment. Atul Deo, director of Amazon Bedrock, the company's AI app development platform, said that the company was cautious about preferring a single AI partner. "Forcing something on customers is not a good strategy," he said, noting that an alternative provider's models could soon be in demand. But Kate Jensen, Anthropic's head of revenue, said that the two companies pitched to potential customers together. "We sit down and say, you've already trusted Amazon with your data," she said. "You need the world's best model." Anthropic has an annual revenue run rate of more than $4bn, according to people familiar with the matter, a sliver of the $107bn AWS generated in the 2024 fiscal year. Amazon's decision to invest in training its own AI models, however, remains a risk for Anthropic, which relies on the tech giant to provide a robust pipeline of corporate customers which are its main revenue source. David Luan, a former OpenAI executive, is leading the cloud provider's pursuit of artificial general intelligence -- systems that surpass human abilities -- and his team has built what the company describes as "dependable AI agents" that have benchmarked better than Anthropic's equivalent. "There are benefits and some drawbacks to the way the relationship is structured but at the end of the day Anthropic look to us to solve a lot of their problems," added one Amazon executive.

Report: Amazon weighing new multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic - SiliconANGLE

Report: Amazon weighing new multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic Amazon.com Inc. executives have reportedly held discussions about making a new investment in Anthropic PBC. The Financial Times on Wednesday cited sources as saying that the funding round could be worth billions of dollars. Amazon has already invested about $13.8 billion in Anthropic, mainly in the form of convertible notes. A convertible note is a loan that the lender can optionally turn into shares. Rumors of an Amazon investment in Anthropic also emerged before the companies announced a $4 billion funding round last November. At the time, they stated that Anthropic would help Amazon Web Services Inc. with its AI chip development efforts. AWS also collaborates with the OpenAI rival on go-to-market initiatives. According to the Financial Times, Anthropic has capped Amazon's stake to keep it under 33%. Similar investment terms reportedly apply to AWS rival Google LLC. The latter company has invested more than $3 billion in Anthropic over several funding rounds. The OpenAI rival uses infrastructure from both AWS and Google Cloud to power its artificial intelligence projects. Anthropic's most capable AI model, Claude 4 Opus, debuted in May. It's a so-called hybrid reasoning model that can either answer prompts instantly or invest additional time in generating a more detailed response. At the time of its release, Claude 4 Opus set new records across several AI coding benchmarks. The model also outperforms its predecessors in other areas. According to Anthropic, Claude 4 Opus is particularly adapt at tasks that require retaining information for an extended period of time. The company provides its AI models through a chatbot that is also called Claude and an application programming interface. According to the Financial Times, those offerings have an annualized revenue run rate of more than $4 billion. That's up from $3 billion in May. To address the growing infrastructure requirements of its models, Anthropic has partnered with AWS on an initiative called Project Rainier. It centers on a sprawling data center campus that the cloud provider is currently building in New Carlisle, Indiana. AWS originally planned to build 16 cloud facilities on the site at a cost of about $11 billion. The plan has since expanded in scope to encompass 30 data centers. The campus is expected to draw 2.2 gigawatts of power, nearly double the amount allocated to OpenAI's first Stargate data center. AWS plans to equip its Indiana campus with tens of thousands of its Amazon EC2 UltraServers. Each system includes four servers, which in turn contain 16 AWS Trainium2 chips apiece. The Trainium2 is a custom AI accelerator that offers double the performance and power-efficiency of its predecessor.

Amazon considers another multibillion-dollar investment in Anthropic, FT reports

(Reuters) -Amazon is considering another multibillion-dollar investment in AI firm Anthropic to strengthen their strategic partnership, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the talks. The e-commerce giant has considered expanding its investment beyond the $8 billion already committed in November last year, the report said. Anthropic declined to comment on the report and Amazon didn't immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters couldn't immediately verify the report. Amazon pumped $4 billion into OpenAI competitor Anthropic in November last year in a bid to capitalize on the generative artificial intelligence technology. The move doubled Amazon's investment in the firm. The investment under consideration will help Amazon retain its position as one of Anthropic's largest shareholders, ahead of Google which has invested over $3 billion, FT said. "We quickly realised that we had many shared goals that were fundamentally critical. The size of the (existing investment) represents our ambition," Dan Grossman, vice-president of worldwide corporate development at Amazon told the newspaper. Amazon is working to bolster its reputation in AI development, after rivals such as OpenAI and Google have taken an early lead, particularly with consumer-focused models. Companies are also bolstering investments in AI and employing creative techniques to hire top AI talent. (Reporting by Dheeraj Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)

Amazon weighs further investment in Anthropic to deepen AI alliance - FT

Amazon.com, Inc. is one of the world leaders in on-line distribution of products to the general public. The group also operates a marketplace activity, allowing individuals and distribution companies to conduct their purchase and selling transactions for goods and services. The activity is organized around three families of products and services: - electronic and computer products: toys, cameras, computers, laptops and peripherals, TVs, stereo systems, readers, wireless communication products, etc. Amazon.com also offers kitchen and garden equipment, clothing, beauty products, etc.; - cultural products: books, musical products, video games and DVDs; - other: primarily Internet interface and application development services. Net sales break down by source of income between sales of services (52.7%) and sales of products (47.3%). Net sales are distributed geographically as follows: the United States (69.3%), Germany (6.5%), the United Kingdom (5.9%), Japan (4.7%), and other (13.6%).