Amazon is spending billions more to back an artificial intelligence startup as it looks for an edge in the new technology arms race.
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.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's move is the latest in a spending blitz among cloud providers to stay ahead in the AI race. And it's the second update in a week to Anthropic's capital structure. Late Friday, bankruptcy filings showed crypto exchange FTX struck a deal with a group of buyers to sell the majority of its stake in
Anthropic's new model suite, announced earlier this month, marks the first time the company has offered"multimodality," or adding options like photo and video capabilities to generative AI.