Anthropic is raising $3.5 billion in fresh funding, bringing its valuation to $61.5 billion. The investment follows Amazon’s earlier $4 billion backing, reinforcing Anthropic’s reliance on AWS as it scales its Claude AI models.
Backing is reportedly coming from venture capital firms Lightspeed Venture Partners, General Catalyst, and Bessemer Venture Partners, according to sources. Additionally, Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX is in discussions to join the investment.
The new funding round intensifies the race against OpenAI and Google DeepMind, while also raising questions about the future of AI infrastructure as Microsoft, Amazon, and SoftBank compete for dominance.
The investment round reflects ongoing confidence in generative AI, despite market saturation and increased scrutiny over the technology’s risks. OpenAI recently secured up to $40 billion from SoftBank, signaling its shift away from Microsoft Azure. Meanwhile, Chinese AI competitor DeepSeek is aggressively expanding, forcing Western firms to reassess their long-term strategies.
Claude AI and Amazon’s Growing Influence
Anthropic has positioned Claude as an enterprise-ready alternative to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, marketing its AI as safer and more reliable for businesses. Amazon’s investment has strengthened its relationship with Anthropic, making AWS the exclusive cloud provider for Claude AI. This deal follows Amazon’s broader efforts to integrate Claude into its services, further embedding AI into cloud computing.
To remain competitive, Anthropic just launched Claude 3.7 Sonnet, an update designed to improve reasoning and comprehension. The company also introduced Claude Code Assistant, an AI tool aimed at developers that can search, edit, test, and push code directly to GitHub.
Anthropic described the tool’s capabilities: “Claude Code is an active collaborator that can search and read code, edit files, write and run tests, commit and push code to GitHub, and use command-line tools.”
Amazon’s investment in Anthropic is part of its broader AI cloud strategy, where AWS competes with Microsoft Azure and emerging SoftBank-backed infrastructure.
OpenAI’s Shift Away from Microsoft and SoftBank’s Growing Role
While Anthropic expands its AWS partnership, OpenAI has started reducing its reliance on Microsoft Azure following SoftBank’s multi-billion-dollar investment. OpenAI has begun diversifying its cloud computing providers, leveraging SoftBank-backed infrastructure for future AI training and deployment.
Microsoft has taken steps to maintain its foothold, securing a right of first refusal clause that ensures Azure remains OpenAI’s primary cloud provider unless Microsoft cannot meet its AI computing demands. However, OpenAI’s recent decisions indicate that it is increasingly looking for alternative infrastructure to reduce reliance on a single cloud partner.
The restructuring of OpenAI’s cloud dependencies reflects a broader shift in AI computing power, where cloud providers are now as important as the models themselves.
Cloud Infrastructure Becomes the Next AI Battleground
The recent funding rounds for Anthropic and OpenAI underscore a growing trend—AI competition is shifting beyond model development to the infrastructure that powers them. While OpenAI is leveraging SoftBank’s backing to explore alternative computing options, Microsoft’s continued investment in Azure ensures that it remains a dominant force in AI hosting.
However, the fact that Microsoft has now canceled multiple data center leases in the United States, and started pulling back on its international data center expansion, raises questions.
Amazon’s strategy with AWS is clear: by backing Anthropic, it strengthens its position in the AI infrastructure space, ensuring that AWS remains competitive with both Microsoft and SoftBank-backed alternatives. AWS is already integrating Claude AI into its enterprise cloud offerings, aiming to attract customers looking for alternatives to OpenAI’s models.
At the same time, Microsoft is still safeguarding its dominance by ensuring that Azure remains deeply integrated with OpenAI’s operations. Its right of first refusal clause means that even if OpenAI builds alternative infrastructure, Microsoft still has the opportunity to match those capabilities.
This contractual safeguard reflects Microsoft’s assumption that AI infrastructure will be one of the most valuable aspects of the AI market in the coming years.
China’s DeepSeek and Global AI Rivalry
While much of the AI competition has focused on U.S. firms, Chinese AI developers like DeepSeek are positioning themselves as global challengers. DeepSeek has been working on its own AI models, with particular attention to enterprise adoption in Asia. Despite restrictions on NVIDIA GPUs and access to U.S. cloud providers, DeepSeek is finding ways to build competitive AI models, illustrated most recently by the widely impactful release of its high performing R1 reasoning model.
SoftBank, which had previously worked with DeepSeek, has recently distanced itself from the company due to security concerns. SoftBank has frozen the use of DeepSeek AI within its subsidiaries, reflecting broader concerns about AI regulation and national security.
DeepSeek’s rise shows that the AI market is becoming increasingly fragmented, with different regions developing their own AI ecosystems. As Western firms focus on enterprise AI adoption, Chinese companies are working on alternatives that align with regional data regulations and technological infrastructure.
The Future of AI Competition
Anthropic’s funding boost puts it in a stronger position to scale its Claude AI models and compete with OpenAI. However, OpenAI still holds a significant lead, with larger funding and a more established enterprise presence. Whether Anthropic can catch up will depend on how quickly it can expand Claude’s adoption beyond AWS and into a broader market.
Meanwhile, Microsoft, Amazon, and SoftBank are competing to shape the AI cloud market. As AI models require increasingly large-scale computing power, the companies controlling AI infrastructure will determine how these technologies evolve. The battle for AI dominance is no longer just about who builds the best models—it’s about who controls the servers, chips, and networks that power them.
