Anthropic's $183 Billion Valuation Could Add Fuel to Amazon's AI Ambitions

Key Points

• Anthropic just closed a funding round valuing it at $183 billion.

• The move will give a boost to Amazon, which has a strategic partnership with it.

• The fund raise shows that it's still early days in the AI boom.

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Rightly or wrongly, Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) has been viewed as something of a laggard in artificial intelligence (AI) among big tech companies since the launch of ChatGPT.

Microsoft, which started investing in OpenAI in 2019, helped engineer the transformative moment when ChatGPT debuted, and Alphabet had been waiting for it with its own large language model (LLM) ready to go. Even Meta Platforms unveiled its own LLM and chat platform, Meta AI, shortly after.

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Amazon, on the other hand, seemed unprepared for the shift to AI. The company has since launched Amazon Bedrock, a managed service on Amazon Web Services (AWS) that provides access to AI models.

It has also launched its own LLM, Nova, which has received much less attention than LLMs from its peers. And it has built AI chips for training (called Trainium) and inference (Inferentia).

However, Amazon's cloud growth has also lagged behind both Microsoft and Alphabet in recent years, which seems to be another sign that those two companies are outperforming it in AI.

Amazon's most consequential move in AI may have been investing $8 billion in Anthropic and forming a strategic partnership with the AI start-up behind the Claude chatbot. And that move looks even smarter after Anthropic's valuation ballooned to $183 billion.

Image source: Getty Images.

Anthropic strikes gold

In a funding round that closed on Tuesday, Anthropic's valuation tripled to $183 billion, just six months after a funding round that valued the company at $61.5 billion.

Anthropic raised $13 billion in a round led by Iconiq Capital, making it clear that it's the closest challenger to OpenAI, which is now in talks for a valuation as high as $500 billion.

The surge in Anthropic's valuation could also be a big win for Amazon because Anthropic is likely to spend at least some of that $13 billion on AI infrastructure supplied by AWS. It's even set to be the primary user of a new Amazon data center in Indiana.

According to analyst research, Anthropic could spend as much as $5 billion on AWS next year, and that number could grow if it receives more funding, or if its exceptional growth rate continues, since the company said that its run-rate revenue improved from $1 billion at the beginning of the year to $5 billion by August 2025, implying an annual growth rate of roughly 700%. Anthropic has differentiated itself from OpenAI with a focus on "safe" AI, and Claude is differentiated from ChatGPT in a number of meaningful ways.

It has also committed to using Amazon's Trainium and Inferentia chips, creating a market for those products that could help it build momentum. The tripling in Anthropic's valuation also makes Amazon's stake in the company that much more valuable.

Amazon's AI future

For Amazon, the Anthropic funding round is more than a win for the company. It also offers evidence that it's still early in the AI boom, since a tripling in valuation in six months shows that investors are eager to throw money at the new technology; and given the partnership between the two companies, a win for Anthropic is a win for Amazon.

While Amazon may have gotten a slow start in AI, it's still the largest cloud infrastructure platform in the world, and it has other outlets for AI, including its e-commerce business, its logistics network, and an advertising business that will help it benefit from the technology.

It's still early days for AI, and there's plenty of room for Amazon to make gains, especially when its close partner is flush with a $13 billion infusion. Its bet on Anthropic is already paying off in more ways than one, and that partnership should help it grab other AI spending at AWS.

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Jeremy Bowman has positions in Amazon and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Microsoft. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2026 $395 calls on Microsoft and short January 2026 $405 calls on Microsoft. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.