Amazon will invest $4 billion in Anthropic, an AI startup founded by former OpenAI employees. The large infusion of capital makes Amazon the latest major tech company to enter the generative AI race.

Amazon will take a minority stake in the AI builder, the companies said Monday in separate statements on their respective websites. Anthropic will develop its own generative AI model, called Claude, using Amazon Web Services as its primary cloud-computing provider and AWS' machine-learning chips for building, training and deployment. That model will offer similar services to compete with Microsoft-backed ChatGPT and Google's Bard.

The partnership, deemed as a "strategic collaboration" by Amazon in its statement, comes as the e-commerce giant continues to embrace AI technologies. Last week, Amazon unveiled AI-powered updates to its Alexa voice assistant enabling it to engage in "smarter and more conversational" interactions with users, Amazon's devices chief Dave Limp said during a demonstration last week at the company's second headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. 

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• Amazon
• Artificial Intelligence
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• ChatGPT