tech

J. Edward Moreno11/22/24

Amazon is doubling its investment in Anthropic, OpenAI’s rival, to $8 billion

Amazon is throwing another $4 billion at Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup founded by former OpenAI executives, intensifying Big Tech’s generative-AI arms race.

The new funding brings Amazon’s’s total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion. The tech giant also said Amazon Web Services would become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider. AWS customers will have early access to Anthropic models that allow them to do “fine-tuning" on their data, the company said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the tech startup behind gen-AI chatbot ChatGPT. Anthropic has its own chatbot, Claude. Google and Meta are developing their own gen-AI products, too.

It’s unclear how investors feel about the news, with the company’s stock down 0.5% shortly after market open.

Amazon and Anthropic deepen strategic collaboration

The new funding brings Amazon’s’s total investment in Anthropic to $8 billion. The tech giant also said Amazon Web Services would become Anthropic’s primary cloud provider. AWS customers will have early access to Anthropic models that allow them to do “fine-tuning" on their data, the company said.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has invested $13 billion in OpenAI, the tech startup behind gen-AI chatbot ChatGPT. Anthropic has its own chatbot, Claude. Google and Meta are developing their own gen-AI products, too.

It’s unclear how investors feel about the news, with the company’s stock down 0.5% shortly after market open.

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Alphabet’s 2015 investment in SpaceX is about to pay off handsomely with the company’s hotly anticipated IPO later this year, which is expected to be the largest in history.

Bloomberg reports that according to new financial filings, Alphabet’s investment could be worth up to $100 billion.

Google invested in SpaceX in 2015 when it, along with Fidelity, invested $1 billion in a round that valued SpaceX at $10 billion. At the end of 2025, Google owned just over 6% of SpaceX, per Bloomberg’s reporting on the more recent filings. That stake has likely been diluted due to SpaceX’s merger with xAI.

OpenAI pulls out of Stargate Norway, hands data center off to Microsoft

This is the third piece of Project Stargate that OpenAI is retreating from since a flurry of announcements last year.

Narvik, Norway

Barclays says autonomous couriers — think sidewalk robots and drones — could push delivery costs down to as little as $1 per order, from between $5 and $7 today and closer to $9 for traditional deliveries in high-labor-cost markets. If robots save $4 on every delivery, and enough companies start using them, the food delivery industry, including companies like DoorDash and Uber, could end up with $16 billion in extra profit every year, according to Barclays.

The catch: we’re nowhere near that world yet. Robots and drones handle less than 1% of deliveries today. Even by 2035, Barclays only sees penetration hitting around 10%.

Google’s Wing and Amazon have also been trying to crack last-mile product delivery — a reminder that this is part of a broader race to automate the most expensive leg of e-commerce.

Lyft is building the infrastructure robotaxis can’t avoid

The ride-hailing company is building an 80,000-square-foot Nashville warehouse where humans will help robotaxis with everything but driving.

Person working at Lyft Nashville warehouse

Uber has long had an asset-light business model: it provided the ride-hailing platform, and its contract workers brought their own vehicles. That’s changing as Uber positions itself at the center of the robotaxi era.

The Financial Times estimates that Uber has committed more than $10 billion to buying robotaxi fleets ($7.5 billion) and investing in the companies that make them ($2.5 billion). That includes yesterday’s announcement that it’s expanding its investment in Lucid, a deal worth about $2 billion, with plans to buy 35,000 vehicles.

This shift pits Uber against industry leaders like Google’s Waymo and Tesla, whose models involve company-owned vehicles running on proprietary platforms. While these autonomous fleets eliminate the need for drivers, they introduce new capital-intensive requirements for charging, cleaning, storage, and repair.

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