Amazon takes on Microsoft as it invests billions in Anthropic
Amazon will invest up to $4bn (£3.3bn) in San Francisco-based AI firm Anthropic, mirroring the earlier tie-up between Microsoft and OpenAI.
It is the latest multi-billion dollar investment in a race among the big tech firms to exploit the potential of artificial intelligence.
Amazon recently said it would use AI to boost its Alexa voice assistant's conversational powers.
Anthropic has its own ChatGPT rival called Claude.
Amazon claimed the investment could help improve customer experiences.
Founded in 2021, Anthropic, an AI safety and research company, is one of several AI start-ups that have recently emerged to compete with firms like Google DeepMind and OpenAI.
As well as online retail, Amazon is a major provider of so-called cloud computing services. In simple terms, it rents out computing power - housed in huge warehouses full of computers called data centers - to other firms to help store or process their data.
The collaboration means Anthropic will be able to draw on this huge computing power.
In turn, Amazon developers will be able to use Claude 2, the latest version of Anthropic's foundation AI model, to create new applications for its customers and enhance existing ones.
Microsoft, which operates a cloud computing business called Azure, has a similar arrangement with OpenAI.
And days after Amazon announced Alexa's AI powered planned upgrade, OpenAI revealed on Monday that users of chatGPT would be able to ask it questions by speaking to it, and post images which could be referred to in conversations.
The partnership with the ChatGPT maker has enabled Microsoft to announce a number of new AI-powered features for existing products, including its intelligent assistant for Microsoft 365, Copilot, due to start rolling out on Tuesday.
The deal with Anthropic, according to Nick Patience, lead AI analyst at S&P Global Market Intelligence, was a further symbol of tech giants like Amazon and Google seeking to rival Nvidia's dominance in the lucrative market for specialist AI chips.
The UK government, which is hosting a global summit on AI at the home of modern computing Bletchley Park in southeast England in November, has said the advent of AI presents a "crossroads" in human history.
In particular, the summit would look at the risk of the misuse of AI, for example, to assist in biological or cyber-attacks.
"The focus on this type of AI is driven by an urgent need for a conversation on how nations can work together to meet the novel challenges these risks pose, combat misuse of models, and utilize AI to do real, tangible public good across the world - from curing disease to improving education.
