The AI market is making another sharp turn. Microsoft and Nvidia have announced the largest joint investment in the industry’s history: the companies are investing $15 billion in Anthropic to strengthen infrastructure, reduce dependence on OpenAI, and gain access to the next generation of Claude models.
Microsoft is contributing $5 billion, while Nvidia is investing $10 billion. This underscores the scale of the partnership: the largest chip manufacturer and one of the largest cloud companies are betting on a rapidly growing startup.
Anthropic’s valuation soars to $350 billion
Since its founding in 2021 by former OpenAI executives, Anthropic has experienced record growth. The new deal has nearly doubled the company’s valuation: from $183 billion to $350 billion.
Claude, Anthropic’s main product, has become a direct competitor to ChatGPT as the market rapidly scales up capacity for training and serving models.
Anthropic purchases $30 billion in computing power
The agreement includes another detail that is shaking up the industry. Anthropic commits to purchase $30 billion worth of computing from Microsoft Azure. In addition, the company will acquire up to one gigawatt of capacity from Nvidia—based on Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems.
A gigawatt is a colossal figure. It’s an energy supply comparable to a large tech center or dozens of data centers. This level of capacity is enough to scale the most demanding AI models.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the deal “a dream come true.” He stated that Nvidia has been following Anthropic for a long time and will now be working with the company more deeply than ever before.
Microsoft expands its strategy beyond OpenAI
Although Microsoft remains the largest investor in OpenAI with a stake of about 27 percent (the investment is valued at $135 billion), the deal with Anthropic shows the company does not intend to depend on a single partner.
The collaboration strengthens Microsoft’s position in the race for capacity, where whoever controls the infrastructure controls the pace of model development. Azure gains one of the fastest-growing clients on the market, while Anthropic gets flexibility across platforms.
At the same time, Amazon remains Anthropic’s main cloud partner. The startup emphasized that AWS will continue to train its models at least until the end of 2024. There are no conflicts between platforms—the industry is entering an era of load distribution among several giants.
Nvidia and Anthropic create joint systems
Another key element of the deal is the joint development of systems optimized for Nvidia chips. This opens access to future generations of accelerators and allows Anthropic to build next-level models in terms of speed and efficiency.
What the leadership says
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that the industry needs to move away from the “winner takes all” mentality. Now, it’s more important to create scalable solutions than to compete for the status of the sole leader.
Nvidia’s tone is similar: Huang emphasizes that the partnership will accelerate the development of Claude and strengthen Nvidia’s role in the fundamental AI infrastructure.
What’s next?
The deal changes the balance of power. Anthropic gains access to record amounts of computing. Microsoft strengthens its influence beyond OpenAI. Nvidia increases its control over next-generation infrastructure. The market is entering a phase where the value of capacity becomes more important than the value of the models themselves.
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