Anthropic signs $35B computing deal with startup backed by Nvidia

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei attends a meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron on the sidelines of the AI ​​Impact Summit in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 19. (Credit: Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images)

Anthropic signed a $35 billion deal for access to cloud computing power from a U.S.-based startup backed by Nvidia, adding to a string of such deals clinched by the artificial intelligence (AI) developer amid fierce competition for advanced computing power.

The San Francisco-based AI lab has agreed to a six-year deal with Lambda, a source familiar with the deal told AFP.

Based in San Jose, California, Lambda provides access to AI cloud computing services.

Lambda will secure access to a data center being built by another company, Hut 8, which mines bitcoins and builds data centers, including one in Texas that Anthropic will tap for computing power, according to media reports.

Nvidia, which has invested in both Anthropic and Lambda, will lease the data center from Hut 8, and Lambda will then pay Nvidia an unknown amount to get access to the data center, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.

Anthropic also recently signed a similar six-year-long deal worth $45 billion with Nscale, a cloud provider based in London, which will give Anthropic capacity at a facility in West Virginia, a source confirmed to AFP.

Just this year, Anthropic has signed various computing deals worth at least $135 billion.

The company is in a race with AI lab OpenAI to win customers and grow revenue; the rivals are both barreling toward initial public offerings as well.

Demand for chips and advanced computing power has skyrocketed over the past couple of years as leading AI model developers compete with each other for customers and capacity.

Meanwhile, that demand is also crunching global supply chains for chips across sectors, including consumer electronics.

Apple has already increased prices for certain devices, such as Macs and iPads, due to memory and chip costs; the company is expected to increase prices for the newest generation of iPhones which it will unveil at an event in September.

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