Amazon completes its $4bn investment in AI firm Anthropic

March 28, 2024

1 minute read

Anthropic is the company behind the Claude chatbot, and is one of the buzziest firms in the AI sector. But it’s also one of the most controversial in the eyes of music rightsholders. A group of publishers are currently suing the company alleging copyright infringement of their lyrics.

But the case hasn’t put some of the world’s biggest technology companies off backing Anthropic. Last year Amazon said it would be paying $4bn for a minority stake in Anthropic, stumping up $1.25bn as the first tranche of that investment. This week, it completed the deal with another $2.75bn investment.

In its announcement, Amazon praised Claude’s “advanced intelligence, near-human levels of responsiveness, improved steerability and accuracy, and new vision capabilities” noting that its most advanced model “has set a new standard, outperforming other models available today—including OpenAI’s GPT-4—in the areas of reasoning, math, and coding”.

Amazon isn’t the only big tech firm waving its wallet at Anthropic. Last October, reports claimed Google was also putting $2bn into the company, starting with a $500m investment that month.