Amazon CEO Andy Jassy speaks during a keynote address at AWS re:Invent 2024, a conference hosted by Amazon Web Services, at The Venetian Las Vegas on December 3, 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Noah Berger | Getty Images
Amazon said Friday it will continue offering Anthropic’s artificial intelligence technology to its cloud customers, excluding work involving the Department of Defense.
The announcement comes after the federal agency informed Anthropic on Thursday that it would label the company a “supply chain risk.” Anthropic responded by saying it has “no choice” but to challenge the designation in court.
“AWS customers and partners can continue to use Claude for all their workloads not associated with the Department of War (DoW),” an Amazon Web Services spokesperson said in a statement. “For all DoW workloads which use Anthropic technologies, we are supporting customers and partners as they transition to alternatives running on AWS.”
Amazon, the leader in public cloud, is following top rivals Microsoft and Google in updating customers on Anthropic’s availability. Microsoft said late Thursday that Anthropic’s Claude models will remain accessible in its products outside of defense work, and Google issued a similar statement earlier Friday.
Amazon is one of Anthropic’s biggest financial backers, investing $8 billion in the startup since 2023. The two companies have also forged a strong commercial relationship.
AWS remains Anthropic’s primary cloud and training partner. Anthropic also committed to use 500,000 of Amazon’s custom-built chips, called Trainium 2, as part of an $11 billion AWS data center campus built for the startup, called Project Rainier.
This is breaking news. Please refresh for updates.
