Amazon Raises Investment in India to $26 Billion by 2030

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS
TT

Amazon Raises Investment in India to $26 Billion by 2030

FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS
FILE PHOTO: A man walks past a logo of Amazon Prime Video during a launch event in Mumbai, India, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Francis Mascarenhas/File PhotoREUTERS

Amazon.com Inc said on Friday it will take its investments in India to $26 billion by 2030, adding $6.5 billion in new planned investments in an announcement made after CEO Andy Jassy met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the United States.

Though Jassy gave no breakdown, the announcement follows Amazon's cloud computing unit Amazon Web Services (AWS) saying last month it will invest 1.06 trillion rupees ($12.9 billion) in the country by the end of 2030.

Earlier, Amazon had announced a $6.5 billion investment plan, largely to boost its e-commerce business where it competes with Walmart's Flipkart and billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Retail.

The new investment amount committed now comes to around an additional $6.5 billion, Reuters reported.

The e-commerce giant's announced investment during Modi's trip adds to other companies, including US semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials and memory chip firm Micron Technology, which have made commitments during the Indian prime minister's state visit.

Modi and Jassy spoke about supporting Indian startups, creating jobs, enabling exports, digitisation, and empowering individuals and small businesses to compete globally, an Amazon blog post said.

Separately, Google will open a global fintech operation center in GIFT City in India's western state of Gujarat, with teams working on operations supporting its payment service GPay, and other product operations at Google, the company said in a statement to Reuters.

"We shared Google is investing $10 billion in the India digitisation fund, and we are continuing to invest through that," CEO Sundar Pichai told reporters in a video shared on Twitter by Reuters partner ANI company.

On the final day of his Washington trip, Modi met with US and Indian technology executives, including Apple's Tim Cook, Google's Pichai and Microsoft's Satya Nadella and appealed to global companies to "Make in India".



Amazon Doubles Down on AI Startup Anthropic with $4 bln Investment

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
TT

Amazon Doubles Down on AI Startup Anthropic with $4 bln Investment

The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid
The logo of Amazon is seen on the door of an Amazon Books retail store in New York City, US, February 14, 2019. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

Artificial intelligence startup Anthropic said on Friday it has raised an additional $4 billion investment from longtime backer Amazon.com, bringing the e-commerce giant's total investment to $8 billion, underscoring Big Tech's growing genAI investments.

Amazon will maintain its position as a minority investor, the company said. Its AWS unit will also be Anthropic's official cloud provider.

Anthropic also said it is working with AWS' Annapurna Labs on the development of future generations of Amazon's Trainium chips and plans to train its foundational models on the hardware, Reuters reported.

Britain's competition regulator had said in September Amazon's partnership with Anthropic will not be referred for a deeper probe as it did not fall under its jurisdiction.

Anthropic, which was co-founded by former OpenAI executives and siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, said last year it had also secured a $500 million investment from Alphabet, which promised to invest another $1.5 billion over time.