(Reuters) -Amazon is considering another multibillion-dollar investment in AI firm Anthropic to strengthen their strategic partnership, the Financial Times reported on Thursday, citing people with knowledge of the talks.
The e-commerce giant has considered expanding its investment beyond the $8 billion already committed in November last year, the report said.
Anthropic declined to comment on the report and Amazon didn't immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Reuters couldn't immediately verify the report.
Amazon pumped $4 billion into OpenAI competitor Anthropic in November last year in a bid to capitalize on the generative artificial intelligence technology. The move doubled Amazon's investment in the firm.
The investment under consideration will help Amazon retain its position as one of Anthropic's largest shareholders, ahead of Google which has invested over $3 billion, FT said.
"We quickly realised that we had many shared goals that were fundamentally critical. The size of the (existing investment) represents our ambition," Dan Grossman, vice-president of worldwide corporate development at Amazon told the newspaper.
Amazon is working to bolster its reputation in AI development, after rivals such as OpenAI and Google have taken an early lead, particularly with consumer-focused models.
Companies are also bolstering investments in AI and employing creative techniques to hire top AI talent.
(Reporting by Dheeraj Kumar in Bengaluru; Editing by Mrigank Dhaniwala)
