Microsoft and Nvidia unveiled a strategic partnership with Anthropic, placing a combined billions of dollars behind the Claude maker. Microsoft commits up to $5 billion in funding and a $30 billion cloud-services commitment for Anthropic, while Nvidia will invest up to $10 billion and supply compute through Anthropic’s forthcoming rounds.
The arrangement deepens ties among OpenAI rivals and highlights the circular AI financing trend, in which cloud providers, hardware makers, and AI startups back one another to secure access to technology and compute.
In a video message, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said OpenAI “remains a critical partner,” and that the firms will increasingly be customers of one another. “We will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure, and we’ll go to market together,” Nadella stated.
The deal sits within a broader industry shift as OpenAI repositions away from its nonprofit origins and AI companies pursue large cloud deals, including a reported cloud arrangement between OpenAI and Amazon. Analysts say these moves reflect the growing importance of scale in AI development.
Experts describe the funding as part of a broader wave of circular financing, where AI startups gain backing from cloud and hardware partners to secure ongoing access to models and compute. The Anthropic-Microsoft-NVIDIA partnership could shape competition among Claude, GPT-4, and related offerings.
