Amazon is investing in the US start-up Anthropic with up to four billion dollars. In doing so, the online retailer wants to secure preferential access to the technology of its OpenAI competitor.
In the race with Microsoft and Google for technology leadership in artificial intelligence (AI), Amazon is taking the next step: The online retailer announced today that it will invest up to four billion dollars in the AI developer Anthropic. The cloud division Amazon Web Services (AWS) will initially take over shares for $1.25 billion. There is also a purchase option for a further $2.75 billion.
In return, Amazon and its customers will reportedly receive preferential access to Anthropic’s technology. The start-up is also committed to running its AI primarily on the AWS cloud. Anthropic also buys thousands of special chips from the company to train the software.
“Claude 2” should be able to read and play back book content within seconds
The two companies did not provide any information about how large Amazon’s stake will be in the future or how highly Anthropic will be valued overall. Experts have so far estimated the valuation at four billion dollars. Previous investors include the Alphabet subsidiary Google and the German software company SAP. Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former employees of the ChatGPT manufacturer OpenAI, in which Microsoft holds almost half of the shares.
The AI startup advertises its chatbot version as safe. The software will not provide users with instructions on how to build weapons or use racist language. “Claude 2” is also specialized in processing particularly extensive commands, for example to summarize contract texts, according to Anthropic. The chatbot is supposed to be able to re-read entire books within seconds and answer questions about them. The video conferencing specialist Zoom, which also holds shares in Anthropic, wants to incorporate AI into its programs.
Software companies in the fight for leadership in AI
At the end of last year, ChatGPT triggered a hype about artificial intelligence and a fight for technology leadership among the large software companies. Microsoft is integrating OpenAI technology into its search engine Bing, among other things, to break Google’s dominance in Internet searches. But the AI “Copilot” is also intended to make work easier in its other products such as the “Windows” operating system or the “Office” office software.
Google is countering the threat of competition with “Bard,” which is based on similar technology. However, the software made a false start in February 2023 when it gave an incorrect answer to a question in a promotional video. A few weeks later, the Alphabet subsidiary announced an AI “magic wand” for various products such as emails or word processing, which, among other things, should make automated summaries possible. Apparently the “Bard” successor “Gemini” is already in the starting blocks.
According to a media report, Apple is also working on a competitor to ChatGPT and Bard. It is based on the “Ajax” language model and is internally called “Apple GPT”. Officially, the iPhone provider is holding back on making announcements on the subject. There are also AI technologies from social networks such as Twitter’s successor X or Meta as well as numerous Asian companies such as Alibaba or Huawei.