Amazon pledges $150 billion to data centre construction, pumps more money into Anthropic in bid to stay on top

Amazon is set to make a substantial investment of $150 billion over the next 15 years in constructing data centers. This is part of a strategic move by the company to solidify its position as a premier provider of computing services for AI applications and digital services.

The ambitious initiative is also proof of Amazon's commitment to maintaining its dominance in the competitive cloud market, where it currently holds a significant lead over its closest rival, Microsoft.

“We’re expanding capacity quite significantly,” said Kevin Miller, a vice president at AWS. “I think that just gives us the ability to get closer to customers.”

Amazon has in the past committed to spending $148 billion over the past two years to build and operate data centers globally in new regions like Mississippi, Saudi Arabia, Malaysia and Thailand. According to reports, It will also be using the money to expand existing server farm hubs adjacent to a Washington metro in Virginia as well as in rural Oregon, which offers cheap hydroelectric power and appealing tax breaks.

Amazon's projected expenditure on data centers surpasses commitments made by its competitors, including Microsoft and Google. Neither of the two companies have released specific figures for server farm-related spending.

Speaking of which, Amazon has also entered into a strategic relationship with AI startup Anthropic, a move aimed at directing competing with Microsoft that has been collaborating with OpenAI.

Last week Amazon completed the second phase of a deal announced last September, when it committed to investing up to $4 billion in the AI startup (Anthropic).

The additional $2.75 billion invested is Amazon’s largest check ever into another company and yet another signal of how critical the development of large language models has become to Big Tech. 

However, Amazon's relationship with Anthropic is a bit more complicated. As is stands another part of Amazon is trying to compete directly with Anthropic’s models. Reports suggest that another division within Amazon is actively competing with Anthropic by developing its own advanced models. Led by Senior Vice President Rohit Prasad, Amazon's AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) team aims to surpass Anthropic's latest models with their forthcoming flagship model, codenamed Olympus, which boasts hundreds of billions of parameters.