Amazon has announced a substantial increase in its investment in Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) startup, by injecting an extra $2.75 billion. This move escalates Amazon’s total financial commitment to Anthropic to $4 billion, ensuring it retains a minority share in the company. Anthropic, based in San Francisco, is recognized as a competitor to OpenAI, the organization behind ChatGPT.

Swami Sivasubramanian, Vice President of Data and AI at AWS (Amazon Web Services), Amazon’s cloud computing arm, expressed that generative AI is set to revolutionize technology significantly. He highlighted the potential improvements to customer experiences that the strategic partnership with Anthropic could bring. Initially, in September, Amazon invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic, with hints at reaching a $4 billion investment mark.

The collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic focuses on advancing foundation models, which are essential for the generative AI systems that have been drawing worldwide interest. As part of the agreement, Anthropic will prioritize AWS for cloud services and leverage Amazon’s custom chips for developing, training, and deploying AI models. Furthermore, Anthropic will offer AWS customers, primarily businesses, access to its AI models through a service called Bedrock. Amazon’s announcement highlighted that companies like Delta Air Lines and Siemens are already utilizing Bedrock to tap into Anthropic’s AI capabilities.

This investment underscores the escalating interest and financial backing by major tech companies in AI startups, amid the increasing allure of the technology among the public and businesses. It also comes at a time when U.S. antitrust regulators are scrutinizing such investments more closely.