Artificial intelligence (A.I.) startup company Anthropic has struck a new investment deal with technology giants Nvidia (NVDA) and Microsoft (MSFT).
As part of the agreement, Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion U.S. in Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion U.S. into the A.I. firm.
The investments have pushed privately held Anthropic’s valuation to about $350 billion U.S., up from $183 billion U.S. in September of this year.
The strategic partnership between the three companies will see Anthropic buy $30 billion U.S. of Azure computing capacity from Microsoft, with an option for an additional one gigawatt of power.
Anthropic has also committed to purchase up to one gigawatt of computing capacity using Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin microchips.
The companies said they will work together on engineering and design to optimize Anthropic’s A.I. models for performance and efficiency.
Analysts say that the deal shows how Microsoft is working to reduce its dependence on Anthropic’s main rival OpenAI.
Microsoft has invested $13 billion U.S. into OpenAI, supporting the company as early as 2019.
Privately held OpenAI has become one of the fastest-growing commercial entities on the planet after the launch of its ChatGPT A.I. chatbot.
Microsoft currently holds a stake in OpenAI that is valued at $135 billion U.S., or roughly 27% of the company.
Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI research executives in 2021. Amazon (AMZN) had been its biggest backer to date, having invested $8 billion U.S. in the company.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) was named Anthropic’s primary cloud provider in 2023 and its primary training partner in 2024. Amazon will continue to serve in both of those roles.
Anthropic is best known for developing A.I. large language models and the chatbot “Claude.”
Microsoft’s stock is up 18% this year and trading at $493.79 U.S. per share.
