Amazon to invest up to $25 billion more in Anthropic; Claude developer to spend more than $100 billion on AWS AI technology

This is the latest edition of a frenetic dash for AI compute to power Claude, which is undergoing some problems of success.

Anthropic is continuing its scramble to accumulate more computing power, and Amazon is only too happy to oblige.

As part of an expanded pact, the e-commerce and cloud giant is poised to invest an additional $5 billion in the Claude developer now and up to $20 billion more in the future.

Anthropic, for its part, aims to spend more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services tech over the next decade. That totals 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, some of which is expected to come online this year. The outlays are said to include multiple generations of the Trainium chips and Gravitron CPUs.

AWS has been Anthropic's primary cloud provider and an investor in the AI start-up turned private juggernaut since 2023. Before this news, Amazon held an $8 billion stake in Anthropic.

This is the latest edition of a frenetic dash for AI compute to fuel Claude, which is undergoing some problems of success. As its tools have become increasingly popular (and allegedly, disturbingly powerful), users have bemoaned use limits and stealth token rationing in recent weeks, with rival OpenAI claiming that its competitive advantage is access to compute.

Anthropic's computing crunch has helped rejuvenate the AI trade in recent weeks by testifying to downstream, end-user demand. In other words, the cacophony of complaints about Claude access is being viewed as evidence that the appetite for compute has meaningful breadth across businesses and isn't just an arms race among hyperscalers.

In April alone, Anthropic reached an AI compute deal with CoreWeave and boosted its agreements with Google and Broadcom.

""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," said Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei in the press release.

For Amazon, this marks an acceleration in its custom chip business (a subset of the AI trade that seems to be going from strength to strength as of late).

Earlier this month, CEO Andy Jassy also said its custom chip business was "on fire" and had exceeded a $20 billion annual revenue run rate, doubling from the $10 billion reported earlier this year.