Amazon said Monday it has agreed to invest up to $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic as the e-commerce group steps up rivalry against Microsoft, Meta, Google and Nvidia in the fast-growing red hot sector that many technologists believe could be the next great frontier.
The e-commerce group said it will initially invest $1.25 billion for a minority stake in Anthropic, which like Google and OpenAI, also operates a generative AI chat platform. As part of the deal, Amazon has an option to increase its investment to a total of $4 billion.
TechCrunch reported exclusively earlier this year that Anthropic, which also counts Google as a significant investor, had planned to raise as much as $5 billion over the next two to three years.
Anthropic, which also counts Spark Capital, Salesforce, Sound Ventures, Menlo Ventures, and Zoom among its backers, has now raised a total of $2.7 billion. It was valued at about $5 billion in May this year when it secured $450 million.
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