Amazon just threw $100B at the AI arms race

The AI tab just got comically huge

Amazon and Anthropic just deepened their relationship in a way that makes most “strategic partnerships” look like a polite handshake. Anthropic says it will spend more than $100 billion on Amazon Web Services over the next decade, using AWS to train and run its frontier AI models.

Amazon isn’t just hosting the party

Amazon is also putting more skin in the game: it’s adding another $5 billion investment in Anthropic, with up to $20 billion more tied to performance milestones. That comes on top of the $8 billion Amazon had already invested. In other words, this isn’t a casual cloud customer — it’s a full-blown AI co-dependency.

Why investors should care

This deal is bullish for AWS, especially with Anthropic expected to use Amazon’s upcoming Trainium3 chips later this year. If the partnership scales the way Amazon hopes, it could mean more cloud spend, more chip demand, and more reason for investors to think AWS is still one of the best seats in the AI race.

But there’s a bit of weirdness here too. Critics say deals like this can look “circular,” with companies investing in each other while also buying each other’s stuff. Cramer waved that off on Monday, basically asking: if the demand is real, why can’t everyone win?

The big picture

AI infrastructure is turning into an arms race with an absurdly high tab, and Amazon is trying to make sure it owns the casino — not just a poker table inside it.