Amazon Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Backing Up The Brinks Truck For Anthropic (More Billions, Please)

You’d think after burning $8 billion on Anthropic last year, Amazon would finally feel something. Wrong. Financial Times is now reporting that Andy Jassy & Friends are prepping another multibillion-dollar money-slap for Anthropic… presumably because the only thing more AI than language models right now is corporate insecurity measured in twelve-zero increments. 

(Source: Giphy) 

Round one: November 2023. Amazon wires $4 billion to Anthropic, the OpenAI knockoff started by people who thought “what if we made the same mistakes, but this time in hoodies?” Round two: More billions, presumably signed over during a cloud vendor three-way with Google lurking in the Zoom call. Current tab: $8 billion, and the bartender is still pouring.

(Source: Yahoo Finance) 

Of course, Amazon is shouting “innovation” with this. But instead, the writing on the wall reads, tailgating the next Microsoft + OpenAI feeding frenzy with a flamethrower and a blank check and grabbing a front-row seat before Satya and Sundar start drafting NBA-style non-compete clauses for every PhD under 35. So now, Amazon is buying future compute, future board seats, and (mostly) future headlines about generative partnerships that will probably end with one side in therapy. 

Additionally, Amazon needs Anthropic to infect AWS with enough proprietary tech that the next 47,000 cloud customers don’t even blink before shoveling money into serverless hallucinations. Every dollar Amazon wires to Anthropic is another tiny insurance policy against Microsoft converting the entire Fortune 500 into Azure mouth breathers. Meaning, Amazon’s only real play is to own the rails… a.k.a. hardwiring Anthropic’s “Claude” models straight into AWS so every C-suite AI tourist has to swipe their Prime card for the privilege. Translation: AWS is now welded to Anthropic’s fate; if the models are hot, everybody’s margins (and egos) get juiced. If they faceplant, there’s a whole city-sized data center in Ohio with nobody to talk to except TikTok’s recommendation engine. 

(Source: Giphy) 

Meanwhile, Google is currently $3 billion deep and can’t stop refreshing the PnL. Microsoft dumped $14 billion into OpenAI and occasionally gets to take GPT to the prom. What’s the upper limit on this AI overbidding? No clue. But what I do know is that Anthropic HAS to be enjoying its role as the Bonnie Blue of AI right now.  Especially considering that cloud supremacy, model access, retention deals for research talent are all the assets stapled to Amazon’s multibillion-dollar wire transfer. 

For more context, this is just another Christmas miracle for Anthropic as they continue to have AWS as both a distributor and a guinea pig, piping Claude into corporate America overnight. Meaning, they get scale before anyone cares if their tech breaks stuff (it will). Additionally, the more Anthropic bakes its stuff into Amazon’s enterprise smorgasbord, the less oxygen for every would-be upstart or Google-aligned vendor. 

(Source: Giphy) 

So yeah… that’s the gist. Amazon keeps mainlining Anthropic equity while every other cloud king keeps panic-spending. Am I surprised? No, not at all. This is Anthropic we are talking about. If this were Grok… well, then I’d definitely have stronger opinions on the matter. But it’s not (thank God), and if anyone is going to be the Joker to OpenAI’s Batman, it’s Anthropic. Meaning, keep your eyes on this potential investment and place your bets accordingly. Until next time, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Amazon, Google, and Microsoft as mentioned in the article.