(Nov 18): Microsoft Corp and Nvidia Corp are committing to invest up to a combined US$15 billion in Anthropic PBC, in a move that ties the AI developer closer to two of the biggest backers for its rival OpenAI.
Anthropic has also committed to purchase US$30 billion of computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure cloud service, the companies said on Tuesday.
“We are increasingly going to be customers of each other — we will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure, and we will go to market together,” said Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella in a video posted Tuesday. “Of course, this all builds on the partnership we have with OpenAI, which remains a critical partner for Microsoft.”
Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former employees of OpenAI, has positioned itself as a reliable, safety-conscious firm that users can trust. While it’s smaller than OpenAI, the company’s Claude chatbot and underlying technology have gained traction with enterprise customers in sectors like finance and health care, as well as with developers.
The company recently raised US$13 billion at a US$183 billion valuation in September and says it has 300,000 business customers.
Like rival OpenAI, Anthropic is now accelerating its push to build out more infrastructure to support AI development and broader adoption of the technology. Anthropic plans to spend US$50 billion to build custom data centers for AI work in several US locations, including Texas and New York.
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Anthropic also announced a deal in October with Alphabet Inc’s Google to dramatically increase the startup’s computing capacity. Google will supply up to 1 million of its specialized AI chips to Anthropic, a deal worth tens of billions of dollars.
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