What's going on?

It took a while, but Amazon has finally found its very own ChatGPT lookalike.

What does this mean?

Microsoft kicked off the AI frenzy back in January when it acquired a $10 billion stake in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. And ever since, we�ve all been waiting to see how the other tech titans would respond. So far, we�ve had Alphabet�s Bard and Alibaba�s Ernie, of course, and on Monday, well, we got Amazon�s. The company announced it�s buying a $4 billion minority stake in Anthropic, creator of ChatGPT lookalike Claude 2. There are some seriously smart and creative people in artificial intelligence but, really, those names, people.

Why should I care?

For markets: A-W-Yes.
Microsoft told AI-hungry investors on its most recent earnings conference call that ChatGPT would boost revenue growth for Azure � the firm�s high-flying cloud services business � by around two percentage points. And that�s a not-too-shabby improvement on the 25% growth rate Azure is already seeing. The question now is whether Anthropic can do the same for AWS ��Amazon�s even-bigger cloud wing ��with a strategic partnership aimed at giving all those AWS customers access to its nifty AI tech. And with a stunning $100 billion or so of annual revenue coming from AWS, it would take only a tiny percentage in uplift to deliver a handsome return on Amazon�s $4 billion outlay.

Zooming out: Chipping away at Nvidia�s lead.
Nvidia makes the semiconductors that power AI, so its stock has been one of the unsurprising go-tos for anyone wanting in on the AI megatrend. But there�s some fine print in this Amazon deal that might interest Nvidia shareholders. As part of its tie-up with the Amazon, Anthropic will use chips designed by AWS to train all its AI models. And that�s one big, 800-pound gorilla of a competitor for Nvidia to try to outmaneuver.