Amazon and Anthropic agree to cross-invest $125 billion

Amazon and AI startup Anthropic have entered into a $125 billion mutual funding agreement. The agreement has found support on Wall Street, with Cathie Wood's structures increasing their position in Amazon, while experts at Bank of America and KeyBanc raised their stock forecasts for the largest online retailer, which is increasingly becoming a provider of cloud services and artificial intelligence technologies.

Amazon will invest $5 billion in Anthropic and may invest another $20 billion over time - future tranches are tied to "certain commercial milestones," the two companies said in a joint statement. Amazon plans to make similar investments on top of the $8 billion already invested in Anthropic since 2023. For its part, the developer of chatbot and code-writing tool Claude has pledged to spend more than $100 billion over the next 10 years to buy Amazon's cloud services and chips.

The deal was made based on the startup's $350 billion valuation, excluding new funding. Thus, Amazon achieved more favorable terms than other market participants: in February 2026, Anthropic was valued at $380 billion, and has since received funding offers based on a capitalization of over $800 billion, notes Bloomberg.

Amazon shares on the Nasdaq postmarket on April 20 jumped by 2.4%. On April 21, the growth of quotations accelerated to 3.4% at the over-the-counter trades in the USA.

Anthropic has indicated that it will get up to 5GW of new capacity for Claude over the decade, with nearly a fifth arriving as early as this year. At current chip prices, $100 billion would only be enough for 2 GW, says the Financial Times. However, the cost of computing has fallen dramatically over the previous 10 years, and prices are expected to continue to fall, the paper notes.

Similar to OpenAI, Anthropic is making looped deals: by raising funds from partners such as Amazon, the startup then acquires their own microchips. Earlier this month, Anthropic agreed with Google and Broadcom to expand its computing capacity by about 5 GW more in the coming years.

Ark Invest's investment company Cathie Wood bought 3492 shares of Amazon through ARK Space & Defense Innovation exchange-traded fund on April 20. The amount of the deal is estimated at about $867 thousand. The purchase of the securities followed the news about the expansion of the partnership agreement between Amazon and Anthropic, Benzinga writes.

Wood's strategy is called the direct opposite of Warren Buffett's value investing: if the "Oracle of Omaha" is looking for undervalued companies, the founder of Ark Invest readily invests in developers of potentially breakthrough technologies and loss-making companies with large capitalization in the expectation of their success in the future.

Analysts at Bank of America and KeyBanc improved their outlooks on Amazon shares on April 20, MarketScreener reports. BofA raised the target price of the securities by 8.4% - from $275 to $298 per piece with the preservation of "buy" rating (Buy). KeyBanc's Justin Patterson raised the target by 14% - from $285 to $325 - and improved sales forecasts for 2026 and 2027 by 1% and 2%, respectively.

Patterson expects the AI boom to continue to drive Amazon Web Services' cloud business, with revenue growth at Anthropic, up to 60% of whose costs go to AWS, "providing meaningful support". He also noted the launch of Amazon's satellite internet service Leo: the purchase of Globalstar will give Amazon frequencies, providing the service "a good opportunity to strengthen its position as an alternative market player ", Barron's reports.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor