Amazon’s $4 Billion Investment in Anthropic Shakes Up AI Landscape, Fuels FTX’s Restructuring Efforts
Crypto News – In a significant development, e-commerce giant Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is in talks for a substantial $4 billion investment in Anthropic, a notable rival to OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT.
Of particular interest is that Anthropic is the same company in which the crypto exchange FTX had invested prior to its bankruptcy announcement in November 2022. In June 2023, FTX decided to temporarily halt the sale of its $500 million stake in Anthropic as part of due diligence procedures.
Renowned crypto journalist Colin Wu suggests that this could be an opportune moment for FTX to sell its $500 million stake in Anthropic, potentially enabling them to repay their creditors. Wu elaborates:
“Amazon plans to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic, a direct competitor to OpenAI, with an initial injection of $1.25 billion. FTX had initially invested $500 million in Anthropic in 2022, before the surge in ChatGPT’s popularity. In theory, FTX stands to sell the shares for more than $500 million, which would be positive news for the creditors.”
FTX, amidst its ongoing restructuring, is diligently working on a plan to repay its creditors. This revamp also entails the relaunch of the exchange as FTX 2.0.
Amazon’s keen interest in Anthropic is a pivotal development. Anthropic, recently valued at nearly $5 billion in a recent funding round, has shifted its alliance from Google, which invested $300 million in the company last year, to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
This strategic shift follows Anthropic’s prior announcement to utilize Google’s chips and cloud for training its models. Anthropic’s Claude chatbot, a competitor to ChatGPT, is already integrated into AWS’s Bedrock service, allowing customers to develop generative AI applications in the cloud.
Adam Selipsky, AWS CEO, describes this collaboration as a “significant expansion of the partnership.” Additionally, this partnership grants Anthropic access to Trainium chips for training future iterations of its fundamental models. Amazon is set to become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider for mission-critical workloads.
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