Amazon is ramping up its commitment to the world of artificial intelligence (AI) with a substantial investment of $4 million in Anthropic, an AI startup.Â
This strategic partnership aims to further advance the development of safer generative AI technologies. Focused on expediting the development of Anthropic’s future foundation models and extending their accessibility to Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers, the agreement encompasses several key components.
Anthropic will harness AWS Trainium and Inferentia chips to construct, train, and deploy its upcoming foundation models. This move leverages the price, performance, scale, and security advantages of AWS. Furthermore, the two companies will collaborate on the evolution of Trainium and Inferentia technology.
AWS will become the primary cloud provider for Anthropic, particularly for mission-critical tasks such as safety research and foundation model development. Anthropic plans to migrate the majority of its workloads to AWS, thereby benefiting from the cutting-edge technology offered by the world’s leading cloud provider.
Anthropic commits to providing AWS customers worldwide with access to future iterations of its foundation models through Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s fully managed service that offers secure access to top-tier foundation models. Additionally, Anthropic will grant AWS customers early access to unique features for model customization and fine-tuning.
The partnership heralds exciting possibilities for both companies. Amazon developers and engineers will gain access to Anthropic models through Amazon Bedrock, enabling them to incorporate generative AI capabilities into their projects. This move is poised to enhance existing applications and cultivate entirely new customer experiences across Amazon’s diverse business ventures.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy expressed his optimism about the collaboration, emphasizing the potential of Amazon Bedrock and AWS Trainium to deliver enhanced value to customers. He stated, “Customers are quite excited about Amazon Bedrock, AWS’s new managed service that enables companies to use various foundation models to build generative AI applications on top of, and our collaboration with Anthropic should help customers get even more value from these two capabilities.”
Dario Amodei, Co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, echoed this sentiment, highlighting the significance of using AWS’s Trainium chips to develop future foundation models. The partnership expansion builds upon Anthropic’s earlier support of Amazon Bedrock and aims to unlock new possibilities for organizations of all sizes.
Anthropic has rapidly evolved into a global leader in foundation model provision and a staunch advocate for the responsible deployment of generative AI. Their foundation model, Claude, excels in a wide array of tasks while maintaining reliability and predictability. Claude’s impressive capabilities span industries from manufacturing and aerospace to finance, legal, and healthcare. Customers have reported a higher degree of control and reliability with Claude compared to other foundation models.
The partnership’s resources will assist customers in harnessing the potential of Claude and Claude 2 on Amazon Bedrock. These AI models are already transforming industries such as travel, asset management, and legal services. With early access to model customization features and fine-tuning capabilities, customers can further tailor these models to their specific needs.
The collaboration between AWS and Anthropic marks another significant step in AWS’s generative AI offerings. Customers can access a wide range of foundation models, customize them to protect their data privacy, and seamlessly integrate them into their AWS workloads through Amazon Bedrock. The partnership strengthens AWS’s position across all layers of the generative AI stack, including hardware, foundation models, and applications and services.
As part of this collaboration, AWS and Anthropic are dedicating substantial resources to help customers leverage Claude and Claude 2 on Amazon Bedrock. The AWS Generative AI Innovation Center will provide support for organizations of all sizes, enabling them to develop innovative AI-powered applications and drive transformation within their businesses.
Both Amazon and Anthropic are active advocates for the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies. They participate in numerous organizations and initiatives, including the OECD AI working groups, GPAI, the Partnership on AI, ISO, NIST, and the Responsible AI Institute. Their commitment to fostering AI’s safe, secure, and responsible advancement is further exemplified by their voluntary commitment to support ethical AI development.
This partnership signifies Amazon’s dedication to enhancing its AI capabilities, making AI accessible and responsible. The future of generative AI holds exciting prospects for AWS customers and beyond.
