Amazon wants Anthropic to ditch Nvidia chips for cash

Big tech checks never come without strings attached, and Amazon is making its demands loud and clear.

Billions on the table, but with a custom-silicon catch

Amazon is in talks to invest multiple billions of dollars in Anthropic, according to a report from The Information. The deal would follow Amazon's initial $4 billion commitment last year, with a very similar structure, but with a major catch: Amazon wants Anthropic to train its AI using Amazon-developed chips hosted on AWS.

Anthropic has long preferred Nvidia hardware, which remains the gold standard for foundation models. However, the sheer size of the check might be impossible to turn down.

Earlier this year, Anthropic reportedly projected it would burn more than $2.7 billion in 2024 to train and scale its models. The startup has spent months hunting for fresh capital at a $40 billion valuation. To date, Anthropic has raised $9.7 billion, roughly half of OpenAI's $21.9 billion war chest.

Why it matters

We think this is a classic cloud power play. Amazon desperately needs an elite AI lab like Anthropic to validate its in-house silicon, prove it can handle frontier-scale training, and chips away at Nvidia's pricing power.

For Anthropic, agreeing to the condition comes with serious risks: moving away from Nvidia's battle-tested software ecosystem can introduce engineering headaches and slow down model releases. But when you are burning through nearly $3 billion a year, financial survival usually beats chip loyalty every single time.