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Investments

Amazon’s $4 Billion Investment in Anthropic: A New Era for AI Development

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Sven

September 25th, 2023

~ 4 min read

Today, the tech world is buzzing with the news that Amazon has announced a staggering $4 billion investment in Anthropic. This groundbreaking collaboration aims to develop the most reliable and high-performing foundation models in the industry. With Anthropic’s frontier safety research and products combined with Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) expertise in running secure and reliable infrastructure, the goal is to make Anthropic’s safe and steerable AI widely accessible to AWS customers.

AWS as Anthropic’s Primary Cloud Provider

As part of this partnership, AWS will become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads. This means that Anthropic’s team will have access to leading compute infrastructure, including AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips. These cutting-edge technologies will be utilized alongside existing solutions for model training and deployment. The collaboration between Anthropic and AWS will focus on the development of future Trainium and Inferentia technology, pushing the boundaries of AI innovation even further.

Expanding Support for Amazon Bedrock

The demand for Anthropic’s flagship model, Claude, from AWS customers has been substantial. To meet this growing need, Anthropic is expanding its support for Amazon Bedrock. This expanded support includes secure model customization and fine-tuning on the service. Enterprises will now be able to optimize Claude’s performance with their expert knowledge while mitigating the potential for harmful outcomes.

Developers and engineers at Amazon will be empowered to leverage Anthropic’s state-of-the-art models through Amazon Bedrock. This integration will enable them to incorporate generative AI capabilities into their work, enhance existing applications, and create new and exciting customer experiences across Amazon’s vast range of businesses.

Applications Across Industries

The possibilities presented by Anthropic’s models are truly endless. Organizations across various industries are already building with Anthropic models on Amazon Bedrock, achieving remarkable results. For instance, LexisNexis Legal & Professional, a leading provider of information and analytics, is utilizing a custom, fine-tuned Claude 2 model to deliver conversational search, insightful summarization, and intelligent legal drafting capabilities through its revolutionary Lexis+ AI solution.

Similarly, Bridgewater Associates, a premier asset management firm, is developing an investment analyst assistant powered by Claude 2. This assistant generates elaborate charts, computes financial indicators, and creates summaries of the results, providing invaluable support to investment professionals. Furthermore, Lonely Planet, a renowned travel publisher, reduced its itinerary generation costs by almost 80 percent after implementing Claude 2. By synthesizing decades of travel content, Claude 2 delivers cohesive and highly accurate travel recommendations to users.

Commitment to Safety and Responsible Development

Both Anthropic and Amazon share a strong commitment to the safe training and deployment of advanced foundation models. As an industry leader in cloud security, Amazon is dedicated to promoting and implementing safety best practices on Amazon Bedrock. This ensures the responsible use of Anthropic’s products and services. Both companies actively engage with influential organizations such as the Global Partnership on AI (GPAI), the Partnership on AI (PAI), and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to promote the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies.

In July, both Amazon and Anthropic independently supported a set of voluntary safety commitments led by the White House. By aligning themselves with these commitments, they ensure that the future of transformative AI is guided by principles of safety, security, and trust.

Investment and Continued Growth

As part of the $4 billion investment, Amazon will take a minority stake in Anthropic. However, the corporate governance structure of Anthropic will remain unchanged. The Long Term Benefit Trust will continue to guide Anthropic in accordance with its Responsible Scaling Policy. This policy involves conducting pre-deployment tests of new models to manage the risks associated with increasingly capable AI systems.

The immense resources required for training state-of-the-art models, including compute power and research programs, were significant motivators for Amazon’s investment. With the backing of Amazon and the supply of AWS Trainium and Inferentia technology, Anthropic is well-equipped to advance the frontier of AI safety and research. The collaboration between Amazon and Anthropic promises to scale the adoption of Claude, delivering safe AI cloud technologies to organizations worldwide.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Amazon’s $4 billion investment in Anthropic marks a significant milestone in the realm of AI development. By harnessing the power of Anthropic’s cutting-edge models and AWS’ secure infrastructure, this partnership aims to revolutionize the accessibility and reliability of AI systems. With a shared commitment to safety and responsible development, Anthropic and Amazon are poised to shape the future of AI technology, while promoting ethical and trustworthy practices throughout the industry.

Links: https://www.anthropic.com/index/anthropic-amazon