Thirty-Five Billion
Anthropic signed a 35 billion dollar deal for access to cloud computing power from a US-based startup backed by Nvidia, adding to a string of such deals clinched by the 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 cloud computing services provider based in San Jose.
Lambda will secure access to a data center being built by Hut 8, which mines bitcoins and builds data centers, including one in Texas that Anthropic will tap for computing power. Nvidia, which has invested in both Anthropic and Lambda, will lease the data center from Hut 8, and Lambda will then pay Nvidia to get access.
135 billion this year alone
Anthropic also recently signed a similar six-year deal worth 45 billion dollars with Nscale, a cloud provider based in London, which will give Anthropic capacity at a facility in West Virginia. Just this year, Anthropic has signed various computing deals worth at least 135 billion dollars. The company is in a race with OpenAI to win customers and grow revenue; the rivals are both barreling toward initial public offerings.
Demand for chips and advanced computing power has skyrocketed as leading AI model developers compete for customers and capacity, crunching global supply chains. Apple has already increased prices for Macs and iPads due to memory and chip costs, and is expected to increase prices for the newest generation of iPhones unveiled at its September event.