Nvidia, Microsoft Forms New Partnerships with Anthropic, Driving OpenAI Riva...

TMTPOST -- Two of OpenAI’s biggest backers are forming new artificial intelligence (AI) alliance with Anthropic PBC, the ChatGPT developer’s rival.

Credit：Nvidia

Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Anthropic on Tuesday that reshapes competitive dynamics in the AI sector, with Nvidia and Microsoft investing up to $15 billion combined in Anthropic while the AI startup committing to cloud-computing purchases worth of $39 billion.

Under the partnerships, Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic while Microsoft commits up to $5 billion. The investments have juiced Anthropic's valuation to approximately $350 billion, Almost doubling from its value of183 billion in the beginning September, CNBC cited a person familiar with the deal. The surge underscores intensifying competition among AI developers and the massive capital required to remain competitive in model development.

Anthropic, as part of partnerships, has agreed to purchase $30 billion of computing capacity from Microsoft's Azure cloud service and contracted for up to 1 gigawatt (GW) of capacity using Nvidia's Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin chip systems. The 1-GW commitment represents an initial target. If the $30 billion doesn't reach that capacity level, Anthropic could spend additional sums, potentially pushing the total higher, according to the companies.

Nvidia will collaborate with Anthropic on engineering and design to optimize the startup's models for performance and efficiency, marking the first time the chipmaker has partnered deeply with the company. "This is a dream come true for us," Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a video statement Tuesday. "We've admired the work of Anthropic and [Anthropic CEO] Dario [Amodei] for a long time."

For Microsoft, the partnership marks a strategic diversification beyond OpenAI, in which it holds a $135 billion stake representing roughly 27% of the company. The deal brings Anthropic's Claude models to Microsoft's Azure cloud platform, providing enterprise customers with broader AI options as Microsoft and OpenAI increasingly compete in some areas.

Anthropic's models will now be available on Azure Foundry, Microsoft's service for deploying AI models, joining offerings from OpenAI, Meta Platforms, DeepSeek and Elon Musk's xAI.

"We are increasingly going to be customers of each other — we will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure, and we will go to market together," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said. "Of course, this all builds on the partnership we have with OpenAI, which remains a critical partner for Microsoft."

Microsoft and Anthropic had discussed bringing Claude models to Azure Foundry earlier this year but weren't able to reach a deal at that time, Bloomberg learned from people familiar with those discussions. It was said that Anthropic CEO Amodei worked closely with Nadella and Huang to finalize Tuesday's announcement.

Microsoft already uses Anthropic's models in its 365 productivity tools and announced in September it would deploy them in its workplace AI assistant.

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives including Amodei, has positioned itself as a safety-conscious alternative in the AI race. The company recently raised 13billion at a 183 billion valuation and reports 300,000 business customers, with particular traction in finance and healthcare sectors.

The startup maintains relationships with multiple cloud providers. Amazon remains Anthropic's primary cloud provider and training partner, having invested $8 billion and built massive data center complexes with custom AWS AI chips for Anthropic's use. Google agreed in October to supply up to 1 million specialized AI chips to Anthropic in a deal worth tens of billions of dollars.

Anthropic plans to spend $50 billion building custom data centers for AI work in several US locations, including Texas and New York, as it accelerates infrastructure development to support broader technology adoption.

The arrangement announced on Tuesday adds to concerns about "circular" financing in the AI sector, where cloud and chip providers back AI developers that spend heavily on those same firms' services. Such deals have contributed to questions about whether AI-powered products will generate sufficient revenue to justify the vast infrastructure spending, pressuring technology stocks in recent weeks.

Shares of Microsoft and Nvidia both fell nearly 3% Tuesday, part of broader market declines reflecting worries about whether current AI investments will generate sufficient returns.

For Micrsoft, the new partnerships will allow it to continue to broaden its AI footprint, both with more Azure AI customers but also more AI model access, wrtoe Barclays analyst Raimo Lenschow in a note. “Diversification away from OpenAI might be seen as negative in the short term but sounds like the better longterm strategy,” he believed.

The partnership highlights how AI sector leaders must collaborate despite business rivalries and policy disagreements. Amodei has criticized Huang and the Trump administration over chip export policies, arguing they threaten national security. Huang previously said he disagreed with nearly everything Amodei says regarding AI policy and job impacts.

On Tuesday, however, the executives exchanged compliments, with Amodei crediting Nvidia for fueling the AI boom and Huang praising Anthropic's Claude models. "Now your business is on a rocket ship," Huang told Amodei.

"As an industry, we really need to move beyond any type of zero-sum narrative or winner-take-all hype," Nadella said. "What's required now is the hard work of building broad, durable capabilities together so that this technology can deliver real, tangible local success for every country, every sector and every customer."