Shares of Amazon rose in premarket trading on Monday after the company unveiled plans to significantly expand its investment in artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, deepening a partnership that underscores intensifying competition in cloud-based AI infrastructure.
The stock climbed about 2.15% to $253.62 after the market opened on Tuesday.
Amazon expands AI bet with Anthropic deal
Amazon said it would invest an additional $5 billion in Anthropic, with the potential to increase its total commitment to as much as $25 billion under certain conditions. The move builds on the company’s earlier $4 billion investment in 2023 and adds to roughly $8 billion already deployed into the AI startup.
The expanded agreement could bring Amazon’s total potential investment in Anthropic to about $33 billion, depending on milestone-based commitments.
As part of the deal, Anthropic agreed to spend more than $100 billion over the next decade on Amazon Web Services (AWS), reinforcing the cloud unit’s role as a key provider of computing infrastructure for training and deploying advanced AI models.
The partnership also integrates Anthropic’s Claude chatbot platform more deeply into AWS, allowing customers to access it directly through existing AWS accounts.
“Our users tell us Claude is increasingly essential to how they work, and we need to build the infrastructure to keep pace with rapidly growing demand,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement. “Our collaboration with Amazon will allow us to continue advancing AI research while delivering Claude to our customers, including the more than 100,000 building on AWS.”
AWS positioned for growth amid rising AI demand
Analysts expect the Anthropic partnership to support AWS growth, particularly as enterprise demand for AI infrastructure accelerates.
Amazon’s initial investment in Anthropic is seen as a key driver for AWS in the first quarter, potentially contributing about $1.3 billion in revenue, according to analysts at Bank of America.
“We continue to see Amazon as very well positioned to benefit from growing corporate demand for AI capacity,” the analysts said.
The agreement includes long-term commitments to AWS technologies such as Trainium and Graviton chips, as well as access to up to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity to support AI model training and deployment.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said Anthropic’s commitment to AWS infrastructure reflects progress in custom silicon development, particularly with its Trainium chip family.
AI race intensifies despite geopolitical uncertainty
The announcement comes at a time when technology companies are ramping up investments in AI infrastructure, even as geopolitical uncertainty persists.
Swissquote senior analyst Ipek Ozkardeskaya noted that the sector continues to show resilience despite external risks.
“The sector continues to operate in its own lane, with ongoing expansion in AI models and applications driving demand for infrastructure,” she said.
Anthropic’s rapid growth has placed increasing pressure on its computing resources, with the company citing rising enterprise adoption and consumer demand as key drivers behind the expanded agreement.
The deal also highlights broader industry dynamics, as Anthropic continues to maintain relationships with other cloud providers while deepening its reliance on AWS as its primary infrastructure partner.
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