Amazon announced Friday an additional US$4 billion investment in Anthropic, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI executives.

This increases Amazon’s total investment in the company to US$8 billion, although it remains a minority investor.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will serve as Anthropic’s main cloud and training partner. It will use AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to deploy AI models.

Anthropic, recognized for its chatbot Claude, is part of the competitive genAI market.

Previously, Anthropic received a US$1.25 billion investment from Amazon in September 2023, followed by a US$2.75 billion investment.

This marks Amazon’s largest external funding. Notably, Amazon does not have a board seat at Anthropic.