to $5bn, according to statements released Tuesday. Both companies are also expected to participate in Anthropic’s next funding round, a person familiar with the matter said. The deal tightens the links between major industry players: Microsoft, a key backer of OpenAI, and Nvidia, the dominant supplier of AI chips, are now positioned even closer to one of OpenAI’s biggest rivals. “We’re increasingly going to be customers of each other,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a video message, noting that Anthropic will use Microsoft’s infrastructure while Microsoft integrates Anthropic’s models. He added that OpenAI “remains a critical partner.” The announcement comes as OpenAI undergoes an internal restructuring that shifts it further from its non-profit origins, granting it more operational and financial flexibility. The company recently signed a $38bn deal with Amazon to diversify its cloud dependency, and CEO Sam Altman has outlined plans to spend $1.4 trillion to develop 30 gigawatts of computing capacity. Still, nearly three years after ChatGPT’s debut, some investors worry that high-value, circular investment deals are inflating risks in the AI sector. “The main feature of the partnership is to reduce the AI economy’s reliance on OpenAI,” said Gil Luria of D.A. Davidson, adding that Microsoft and Nvidia are hedging their bets by supporting multiple frontier model companies. Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, was recently valued at $183bn and has become a rapidly growing competitor. It now serves more than 300,000 business and enterprise customers and projects its annualised revenue run rate could rise to about $26bn next year, Reuters reported. As part of the new agreement, Anthropic will collaborate with Nvidia on next-generation chips and AI models and commit up to 1 gigawatt of computing power using Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin hardware — a capacity that industry executives estimate could cost up to $25bn. Microsoft will also provide Azure AI Foundry users with access to Anthropic’s Claude models, making Claude the only frontier AI system available across all major cloud platforms. “These investments reflect how the AI industry is consolidating around a few key players,” said eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne. Despite the deal’s scale, tech stocks dipped on Tuesday amid a broader sell-off following a cloud services outage. Microsoft shares fell 3.2 percent, Nvidia dropped 1.9 percent, and Amazon slid 4 percent. Neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is publicly listed.