Amazon (AMZN, Financials) is considering a significant additional investment in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, according to a report by The Information.
Comprising several billion dollars, this possible investment would match Amazon's original $4 billion pledge to Anthropic. The new arrangement could call for Anthropic to make use of recently launched November 2023 Amazon AI processors, Graviton4 and Trainium2.
Traditionally, anthropic has depended on Nvidia (NVDA, Financials) processors; Nvidia has an estimated 70% of the market for AI accelerators. According to reports in October 2024, Anthropic was in negotiations to raise further money at a value of about $40 billion. Supported by Microsoft (MSFT, Financials), OpenAI attracted $6.6 billion in investment and valued the business at $157 billion, ranking second most valuable startup worldwide.
Relatedly, Amazon Web Services has been extending its artificial intelligence capacity from its cloud computing segment. Aiming to improve its AI infrastructure and lower dependency on other vendors, AWS revealed in September 2024 a strategic cooperation with Intel (INTC, Financials) to build proprietary AI processors. This action complements Amazon's larger plan to maintain its leadership in the artificial intelligence market and provide its consumers more reasonably priced options.
Nvidia keeps leading the AI chip market meanwhile as its GPUs are extensively used for artificial intelligence training and inference chores. The business has been concentrating on creating increasingly sophisticated processors to satisfy the rising market for artificial intelligence uses. Indicating a greater need for sophisticated, energy-efficient processors vital for AI technology, Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang, asked SK Hynix to accelerate the production of its HBM4 high-bandwidth memory chips by six months in November 2024.
Significantly investing in OpenAI, Microsoft has been implementing OpenAI's ideas into its goods and services. Microsoft and OpenAI were debating in October about how Microsoft's $14 billion investment would turn into stock when OpenAI moves into a for-profit company. This change is likely to affect the dynamics of the AI sector as well as the alliances among its companies.
