New AI Partnership Extends Spending Spree

 

“Three of the biggest companies in artificial intelligence said Tuesday they formed a partnership featuring tens of billions of dollars in spending, adding to an investment spree that is aimed at supercharging AI model development.

 

Under the partnership, Nvidia and Microsoft will invest up to $15 billion in Anthropic, a competitor to OpenAI. Anthropic’s models are popular with coders and businesses.

 

Anthropic, in turn, said it would buy $30 billion of computing capacity from Microsoft Azure running on Nvidia AI systems. The chip titan will also work with Anthropic on design and engineering.

 

The alliance is the latest sign in the global AI race that the biggest players must work with one another despite potential business rivalries and policy disagreements. Microsoft is a big investor in Anthropic rival OpenAI and offers its models to customers, while Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have clashed over chip exports and the number of jobs lost to AI.

 

The companies don't want to lose out to competitors who are also plowing money into data centers for training models and offering new products.

 

"We are increasingly going to be customers of each other," Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video statement with Amodei and Huang. Azure is deploying hundreds of thousands of Nvidia graphic processing units for training models.

 

Anthropic models will now be available on Azure, Microsoft said. The company already uses AI models from Anthropic in its 365 tools.

 

To increase usage, it is considered critical for model developers to have access to customers of top cloud providers Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Google.

 

The new partnership is the latest among technology giants and hot AI startups aimed at stoking growth in the fast-evolving sector. Also Tuesday, Google launched Gemini 3, an updated version of its own model.

 

The flurry of deals and vast sums that technology titans and investors alike are plowing into new infrastructure have raised concerns in recent weeks about whether AI-powered products will generate enough revenue to justify it.

 

Nvidia and competitor AMD have both struck deals that have bolstered Anthropic rival OpenAI using funding from their own balance sheets, raising investor concerns that the AI boom is being propped up by risky "circular" financing.

 

Anthropic has committed to initially buying up to 1 gigawatt of computing power from Microsoft. That will be deployed using Nvidia's Grace Blackwell servers, which employ the company's current, most-advanced AI chips, as well as Nvidia's Vera Rubin systems, which are set to launch next year.

 

If the $30 billion doesn't get to a gigawatt of capacity, Anthropic could spend more to get to that point.

 

Concerns about an AI bubble have contributed to a recent dip in the stock market. Shares of Microsoft and Nvidia fell nearly 3% Tuesday, part of broad market declines.

 

Nadella said the partnership builds on Microsoft's roughly $135 billion stake in OpenAI by giving Microsoft customers more choice.

 

Microsoft and OpenAI recently struck a new deal that gives Microsoft a 27% stake in the startup's new public-benefit corporation. The tech giant has broken off from the startup in some ways. Microsoft is pursuing its own AI breakthroughs through its Microsoft AI division, which plans to develop AI self-sufficiency by building, testing and releasing its own voice, image and text models.

 

Microsoft has access to OpenAI's models until 2032, a schedule company executives have said gives the company time to make its own models into leading technology.

 

Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman has praised OpenAI and the work the companies have done together, but also distanced himself from OpenAI and competitors in some ways, such as by declining to develop AI that simulates erotica.

 

In a recent interview with business streaming show TBPN, Nadella said the company is focused on being a "platform company" with many partners, and that it has its own capabilities of creating world-class AI technology. Numerous companies use Microsoft's Azure cloud-computing services to train their AI models and run workloads.

 

Amodei said Microsoft's emphasis on enterprise platforms was a natural fit for Anthropic's Claude models, frequently used in business applications. Anthropic needs huge amounts of cash and computing capacity to keep pace with deep-pocketed competitors.

 

The company recently raised $13 billion from investors at a $183 billion valuation and has forecast turning a profit far sooner than OpenAI.

 

Anthropic is unique among AI companies in that it isn't heavily reliant on Nvidia chips because it works closely with Amazon and Google.

 

A former OpenAI executive, Amodei has criticized Huang and the Trump administration for being willing to export AI chips to China and the Middle East, arguing they threaten national security and could boost China in the AI race.

 

Huang has said Amodei's positions are overly restrictive and pushed back earlier this year when the Anthropic CEO predicted massive white-collar job losses caused by AI.

 

"I pretty much disagree with almost everything he says," Huang said at the time. He said that Amodei seems to think AI is so scary that only Anthropic should be building models and suggested it was a strategy to control the whole industry. Amodei called that an "outrageous lie."

 

The two complimented each other Tuesday, with Amodei crediting Nvidia for fueling much of the AI boom and Huang saying Nvidia's developers love Claude.” [1]

 

1. New AI Partnership Extends Spending Spree. Herrera, Sebastian; Ramkumar, Amrith; Whelan, Robbie.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 19 Nov 2025: A1.