Amazon Invests $4 Billion in ChatGPT Competitor, Making a Bold Move in the AI Arms Race The partnership between Amazon and Anthropic is focused on advancing "safer" generative AI development.

As the artificial intelligence arms race presses on, Amazon is making a significant investment to get ahead.

On Monday, Amazon announced plans to invest up to $4 billion in the artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, constituting a minority stake in the company.

The two companies declared they are starting a strategic partnership to advance "safer" generative AI development. The collaboration leverages Anthropic's expertise in foundation models and Amazon's technology resources, notably Amazon Web Services (AWS), which Anthropic has chosen as its primary cloud provider.

The two companies outlined the terms of the partnership:

1. Anthropic will utilize AWS semiconductors (also known as chips) for building, training and deploying its foundation models. It will benefit from the power, scalability and security of AWS infrastructure while collaborating on the technologies' future development.
2. AWS will serve as Anthropic's primary cloud provider for mission-critical tasks, including safety research and future foundation model development, with Anthropic planning to leverage Amazon's advanced cloud technology for most of its workloads.
3. Anthropic is granting AWS customers global access to its forthcoming foundation models via Amazon Bedrock, offering early access to customization features.
4. Amazon's $4 billion investment in Anthropic will allow Amazon developers and engineers to integrate Anthropic models into their projects through Amazon Bedrock, enhancing their applications with generative AI capabilities.

Related: Amazon And The AI War: iRobot Acquisition In Focus

"We have tremendous respect for Anthropic's team and foundation models, and believe we can help improve many customer experiences, short and long-term, through our deeper collaboration," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the announcement.

Anthropic, founded approximately two years ago by former research executives from ChatGPT creator OpenAI, recently introduced its latest AI chatbot, Claude 2.

Amazon's move to partner with Anthropic comes as its major competitors, Microsoft and Google, have been actively advancing their AI initiatives — with Microsoft announcing plans in January to invest as much as $10 billion in OpenAI over the coming years, and Google investing in its own AI tools such as chatbot and ChatGPT rival Bard, along with other generative AI initiatives announced at its annual developer conference in May.

Related: 7 Big Announcements From Google I/O 2023: Google Isn't Holding Back On AI