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Anthropic Keeps Amazon in AI Contest

The Information · Martin Peers · last updated

In Thursday’s Briefing newsletter, my colleague Cory Weinberg reported that bankers at Goldman Sachs’ private tech gathering this week had asked, “For big tech, is capex the new M&A?” as part of a slide presentation on the market. We got the answer today—yes, it is—when Amazon announced it was investing $4 billion more into Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup that appears to be OpenAI’s closest rival. (The Information’s Anissa Gardizy scooped early word of the deal).

To understand the M&A-capex nexus, consider: This is the second $4 billion investment Amazon has made in Anthropic. Amazon will remain a minority investor, as the startup noted. (Anthropic is separately trying to raise money from other investors at a valuation of up to $40 billion.) Even so, Anthropic appears to have become Amazon’s primary AI play, just as OpenAI is Microsoft’s. 

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