A year ago, the leader of SpaceX and Tesla said that Anthropic would never be a leader in artificial intelligence (AI). Today, he has admitted this was incorrect, with Anthropic the fastest-growing AI start-up in the world, with annualized revenue estimated at double that of its competitor OpenAI. For Musk, this means potential AI infrastructure revenue at SpaceX, which just signed a nice commitment from Anthropic.
But there is another megacap technology company that may benefit even more from Anthropic's meteoric rise: Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia.
For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue » Amazon made an early bet to become the lead infrastructure backer for Anthropic, likely after its cloud competitor, Microsoft, did the same with OpenAI. Amazon has invested over $10 billion in Anthropic and has committed to investing a total of $33 billion in the start-up.
In return, Anthropic is going to utilize Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its primary cloud provider, spending $100 billion or more with Amazon. This could be highly meaningful for AWS, especially if Anthropic keeps up this growth trajectory and soon clears $100 billion in annualized revenue, eventually reaching hundreds of billions a year. Last quarter, AWS revenue grew 37% year over year to an annualized run rate of $169 billion.
A lot of this growth is due to Anthropic. On top of this revenue growth, Amazon holds an equity stake in Anthropic estimated at over 10% (the exact figure is not known today). If Anthropic goes public in the largest initial public offering (IPO) in history -- which it is reportedly preparing for later this year -- Amazon's stake could be worth something like $250 billion.
The appreciation of Amazon's stake in Anthropic will be a nice boost for Amazon, but the real value comes from Anthropic's commitments to AWS, including Amazon's homegrown computer chips. This will set the standard for other AI start-ups and Fortune 500 enterprises, leading to even more revenue growth in the years ahead. Amazon management believes that AWS can eventually grow to $1 trillion in revenue.
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