Source: Hard AI
Author: Fang Jiayao
In order to strengthen the competitive advantage in the AI field,$Amazon (AMZN.US)$It was decided to increase investment in generative AI.
On Wednesday, March 27, Amazon announced an additional $2.75 billion investment in AI startup Anthropic, the largest venture capital in Amazon's history.
In September of last year, the two sides announced an initial investment of 1.25 billion US dollars. At that time, Amazon promised that the total investment would reach up to 4 billion US dollars. The investment news released on Wednesday marks the second round of Amazon's capital injection into Anthropic, and also brought Amazon's total investment into the company close to its commitment limit of 4 billion US dollars.
It is reported that Amazon will maintain a minority stake in Anthropic and will not have a board seat, that is, Amazon will neither control the company nor directly participate in the company's daily management and decision-making. According to sources, the deal was based on Anthropic's latest valuation of $18.4 billion before Amazon invested.
Tech giants battle: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are increasing AI investments
According to PitchBook's data, the term “generative AI” became mainstream business vocabulary almost overnight. The field exploded over the past year, with investments reaching a record $29.1 billion in 2023, involving nearly 700 transactions.
At a time when competition for AI technology is becoming increasingly fierce, Amazon,$Microsoft (MSFT.US)$und$Alphabet-A (GOOGL.US)$/$Alphabet-C (GOOG.US)$Other tech giants are increasing their investment in AI startups to ensure their leading position.
Amazon has a mutually beneficial partnership with generative AI startup Anthropic. Under the agreement, Anthropic will select Amazon as its main cloud service provider and use Amazon's self-developed chips to train, build, and deploy its basic model. Amazon has been developing its own chips, hoping to work with$NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$Start competing.
At the same time, Microsoft is also increasing its investment in OpenAI. According to reports, as the startup's valuation exceeds $29 billion, Microsoft's investment in OpenAI has increased to $13 billion. Microsoft's Azure cloud service is OpenAI's exclusive computing power provider, which means that OpenAI's success will directly contribute to the growth of Microsoft's cloud business.
Furthermore, Google is not far behind; it has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, including $500 million in cash injections.$Salesforce (CRM.US)$He is also an Anthropic supporter.
Notably, tech giants are betting more on startups linked to increasingly stringent antitrust scrutiny.
As antitrust scrutiny becomes more strict, Amazon, Microsoft,$Apple (AAPL.US)$, Nvidia, Google,$Meta Platforms (META.US)$und$Tesla (TSLA.US)$These seven tech companies have increasingly close partnerships with other startups. According to Pitchbook data, these large companies are making up for the decline in acquisition activity by increasing venture capital.
According to Pitchbook, the investment amount of these seven technology companies in AI and machine learning soared to US$24.6 billion last year, compared to only US$4.4 billion in 2022. Meanwhile, the number of mergers and acquisitions of big tech companies fell from 40 in 2022 to 13 last year.
In an interview, Pitchbook artificial intelligence analyst Brendan Burke said, “The giants invest in startups that have the potential to disrupt the market, partly to increase their own sales. Because these startups tend to use their products, they are more like partners than competitors.”
Anthropic's “multi-modal” technology leads the field of generative AI
According to public information, Anthropic has successfully completed five financing transactions in the past year, totaling approximately US$7.3 billion. Coupled with this new investment from Amazon, the company's total funding amount has exceeded $10 billion.
This achievement shows Anthropic's technical strength and market competitiveness in the field of generative AI. Anthropic is mainly engaged in research and development in the field of generative AI. Its basic model and chatbot Claude can compete with OpenAI's ChatGPT, and even surpass OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini Ultra in some ways.
Earlier this month, Anthropic announced its next-generation model kit, which is the first time the company is offering “multi-modal” capabilities, that is, adding options such as photos and video to generative AI. This advance marks a new stage in the development of generative AI technology.
It is worth mentioning that the company was founded by former OpenAI research executives and employees, which provided it with a solid foundation in AI technology research and development. With the launch of Claude 3, Anthropic is expected to continue leading the field of generative AI, bringing more advanced solutions to the enterprise and consumer markets.
However, multi-modal capabilities and increasingly complex AI models also present additional potential risks. Recently, Google decided to take its Gemini chatbot offline due to historically inaccurate and debatable responses to its AI image generator on social media.
Unlike other models, Anthropic's latest AI model kit, Claude 3, doesn't generate images; it only allows users to upload images and other documents for analysis.
Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei said earlier this month: “Of course, no model is perfect, and I think that's a very important point. We've worked very hard to make these models as capable and secure as possible. Of course, there are still times when models produce some fictional content.”
Editor/jayden