Tech giant Microsoft Corp and chips maker Nvidia Corp have agreed to invest $15 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) company Anthropic PBC, in a move that takes the developer closer to its rival OpenAI's biggest backers, Bloomberg reported, citing a source.
The source added that the $15 billion will come as part of Anthropic's next fund-raising round.
The companies on November 18 also announced that the Claude chatbot maker has committed to purchasing $30 billion worth of computing capacity from Microsoft's Azure cloud services. Microsoft shares slid 3.5% and Nvidia fell 2.8% today amid a broader market pullback.
Concerns over AI bubble, circular deals
Notably, the $15 billion deal will bring Anthropic closer to its rival OpenAI's major funders. It also comes as Microsoft and the ChatGPT maker have become publicly and increasingly more competitive with one another, the report pointed.
“We are increasingly going to be customers of each other — we will use Anthropic models, they will use our infrastructure, and we will go to market together. Of course, this all builds on the partnership we have with OpenAI, which remains a critical partner for Microsoft,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said when speaking about Anthropic in a video today.
Overall, the report noted that these new deals come amid investor concerns over so-called “circular deals” where cloud computing companies back chips providers, who invest in AI developers, who then push money back into computing and other tech firms. Some are worried that this circular money movement is a sign of certain market bubble surrounding AI and tech companies, it added.
Anthropic raised $13 billion at $183 billion valuation last
- Founded in 2021 by former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has positioned itself as a reliable, safety-conscious firm that users can trust. It’s Claude chatbot and underlying technology have gained traction with enterprise customers in sectors like finance and health care, as well as with developers.
- The company recently raised $13 billion at a $183 billion valuation in September 2025 and claims 3,00,000 business customers.
- Anthropic has plans to spend $50 billion to build custom data centers for AI work in several US locations, including Texas and New York.
- In October 2025, it also announced a deal with Alphabet Inc.’s Google to dramatically increase the startup’s computing capacity. Google will supply up to 1 million of its specialized AI chips to Anthropic, a deal worth ten of billions of dollars.
- In addition to the computing deal, Anthropic’s models will also be made available on Microsoft’s Foundry service for deploying AI models on the cloud.
- Models like Claude Sonnet have long been a notable absence on Microsoft’s cloud, which offers an array of models from OpenAI, Meta Platforms Inc., DeepSeek and Elon Musk’s xAI.
- In September, Microsoft announced it would start using models from Anthropic to help power its workplace AI assistant.
- Amazon is also a key Anthropic partner, with an investment of $8 billion and built a massive complex of data centers and custom Amazon Web Services AI chips for Anthropic’s use. Amazon remains Anthropic’s primary cloud provider.
(With inputs from Bloomberg)