Amazon to invest an additional $4 billion in AI startup Anthropic

Amazon is investing an additional $4 billion in the artificial intelligence startup Anthropic as major technology companies rush to fund generative AI.

This will bring Amazon’s total investment in Anthropic – which began last year - to $8 billion. Anthropic said the Seattle-based tech giant will maintain its position as a minority investor in the startup, which was founded by former leaders of the Microsoft-linked OpenAI.

Under the deal, Amazon said the San Francisco-based Anthropic will now name Amazon’s cloud computing unit, Amazon Web Services, as its “primary training partner.” It will also use two AWS chips to train and deploy its future foundational models, the advanced systems that underpin general-purpose AI services like ChatGPT and Google’s Bard chatbot.

“We’ve been impressed by Anthropic’s pace of innovation and commitment to responsible development of generative AI, and look forward to deepening our collaboration,” Matt Garman, the AWS CEO, said in a statement included in Amazon’s announcement.

The relationship between Big Tech companies and AI startups has received scrutiny from regulators in the U.S. and abroad. However, Amazon got some good news in September when Britain’s competition watchdog said Anthropic's revenue and its combined market share with Amazon in Britain were not big enough to require an in-depth investigation under the country’s merger rules.

FILE - A sign in the lobby of Amazon offices is shown on Feb. 14, 2019 in New York. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)

Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder of Anthropic, speaks on a panel at the convening of the International Network of AI Safety Institutes at the Golden Gate Club at the Presidio in San Francisco, Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu)

FILE - The Anthropic website and mobile phone app are shown in this photo, in New York, July 5, 2024. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is allowing a multibillion-dollar class action investors’ lawsuit to proceed against Facebook parent Meta, stemming from the privacy scandal involving the Cambridge Analytica political consulting firm.

The justices heard arguments in November in Meta's bid to shut down the lawsuit. On Friday, they decided that they were wrong to take up the case in the first place.

The high court dismissed the company’s appeal, leaving in place an appellate ruling allowing the case to go forward.

Investors allege that Meta did not fully disclose the risks that Facebook users’ personal information would be misused by Cambridge Analytica, a firm that supported Donald Trump ’s first successful Republican presidential campaign in 2016.

Inadequacy of the disclosures led to two significant price drops in the price of the company’s shares in 2018, after the public learned about the extent of the privacy scandal, the investors say.

Meta already has paid a $5.1 billion fine and reached a $725 million privacy settlement with users.

Cambridge Analytica had ties to Trump political strategist Steve Bannon. It had paid a Facebook app developer for access to the personal information of about 87 million Facebook users. That data was then used to target U.S. voters during the 2016 campaign.

The lawsuit is one of two high court cases involving class-action lawsuits against tech companies. The justices also are wrestling with whether to shut down a class action against Nvidia. Investors say the company misled them about its dependence on selling computer chips for the mining of volatile cryptocurrency.

FILE - The Supreme Court is seen in Washington, Nov. 2, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)

FILE - The Meta logo is seen at the Vivatech show in Paris, France, on June 14, 2023. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus, File)