Amazon recently announced an additional investment of $4 billion in the artificial intelligence company Anthropic, bringing its total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion. A key aspect of this investment is that Anthropic will primarily rely on Amazon Web Services (AWS) to train its flagship generative AI model.
A highlight of this collaboration is the deep cooperation between the two companies in the chip sector. Anthropic will work with AWS's chip manufacturing division, Annapurna Labs, to develop the next generation of Trainium accelerators. Anthropic stated that its engineers will closely collaborate with Annapurna's chip design team to enhance the computational efficiency of the hardware, and these technological advancements will be used to train its cutting-edge foundational models.
Image source note: The image is AI-generated, provided by the image licensing service Midjourney.
AWS confirmed that Anthropic will utilize the Trainium series chips, including the latest Trainium2, for model training, and will use Amazon's proprietary Inferentia chips for model deployment and services. AWS CEO Matt Garman stated that through collaboration with Anthropic on custom chip development, AWS will continue to push the boundaries of innovation in generative AI technology.
It is noteworthy that Anthropic has raised a total of $13.7 billion through venture capital funding. The company was co-founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei, former Vice President of Research at OpenAI, and is known in the industry for its strong emphasis on AI safety. Currently, tens of thousands of customers are using Anthropic's Claude series models through Amazon's Bedrock platform.
This investment has also drawn the attention of regulatory agencies. The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has previously requested that tech giants, including Amazon, explain the impact of their investments in generative AI on the competitive landscape. However, the UK's Competition and Markets Authority has already approved this collaboration.
In terms of business development, Anthropic recently launched the Computer Use feature that enables the Claude 3.5 Sonnet model to autonomously perform computer tasks and is actively expanding its revenue sources by introducing diverse products such as desktop clients, enterprise versions, and team editions. The company has also established an office in Europe and recruited several industry heavyweights, including Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger.
This deepened strategic collaboration reflects the intense competition among tech giants in the AI field and highlights the crucial role of hardware infrastructure in AI development. With increased investment, the partnership between Amazon and Anthropic will continue to deepen across multiple levels, from chips to software, jointly advancing the research and innovation of the next generation of AI technology.