Alexa+ Plus ChatGPT?
When reports started to circulate that not only was Amazon investing in OpenAI's latest fundraise, but they might put in upwards of $50B, I wondered what this meant:
Is it meant to say something to the market, that they recognize that everyone is asking for access to OpenAI tech? That they’re worried about the state of their in-house models? Something about their relationship with Anthropic, as the latter gets closer to the likes of Microsoft?
As it turns out, it may be all of the above, and a few more things on top. Notably, as Anissa Gardizy, Catherine Perloff, and Amir Efrati report for The Information:
As Amazon weighs an equity investment of tens of billions of dollars in OpenAI, the companies are also discussing a commercial agreement that could require OpenAI to dedicate its own researchers and engineers to developing customized models for powering Amazon’s own AI products, according to a person involved in the talks and another person who was briefed about it.
Amazon could use customized versions of OpenAI’s models to bolster Amazon AI products such as the Alexa voice assistant, one of these people said. Such an arrangement could require both companies to tweak OpenAI models so they respond to customers the way Amazon wants, this person said.
I'm honestly not sure what to make of this. Just today, Amazon opened up Alexa+ to everyone (in the US), after nearly a year of limited access while they tested it in real time. It's... fine. Good in some ways, less good in others. But it's almost certainly too early to know if it's a success or failure yet. With the roll-out, they're obviously touting stats indicating expanding usage, but perhaps they're also seeing other data points that are less encouraging, which they're not sharing?
Or perhaps they simply want to put their foot on the gas. What's better than Alexa+ powered (in part) by Anthropic? How about Alexa+ powered by Anthropic and OpenAI. That's especially interesting when you consider that Apple is about to roll-out their upgraded Siri powered by Gemini. That could very well be what Amazon feels the need to combat here.
What's ironic are the reports that indicate Apple may have actually wanted to go with Anthropic given the results during the Great AI Bake-Off – and their own apparent usage of Claude internally – but business terms dictated that Google was a better fit. Amazon not only has the deal in place with Anthropic, they're the largest shareholder in the company! But beyond Anthropic getting closer to the likes of Microsoft and others, there's this element:
Anthropic is generally more restrictive about letting customers customize its models, a process known as fine-tuning or post-training, than OpenAI is. For instance, Amazon employees cannot post-train Anthropic models beyond what other Anthropic customers have access to, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. On the plus side, Amazon employees have been able to use Anthropic models to create less powerful models through a process known as distillation, the people said.
And that's potentially ironic since – at least by OpenAI's telling – they didn't want the business of helping to rebuild Siri because they didn't want to do the custom work Apple required. Now they're apparently talking about doing just that for Amazon? I guess $50B will do that! Apple, after all, is thought to be paying just $1B a year for their AI partnership work. Everyone and everything has a price, perhaps!
And unlike with the Apple/Google deal, you'd think if Amazon does go down this path, they'd want to tout the OpenAI partnership/capabilities! Hell, they might even market a future Alexa+ this way: it's the Alexa you knew and loved, now powered by both Claude and ChatGPT!1 Oh yes, and Amazon's own models. Though that's apparently another layer here, as I suspected. They're simply not good enough, it seems, and certainly no selling point. Especially if they're going to have to combat Apple with a Gemini-powered Siri (again, even if they don't tout the partnership) and Google itself with their own Gemini-powered products.
There are probably other layers here too. Access to Codex may be one, for Amazon to use/offer alongside Claude Code? Getting OpenAI to use Trainium chips, perhaps? And yes, maybe opening up Amazon's all-important everything store to OpenAI's agents.
Still, $50B is a lot of money. Maybe this is just all about ensuring Google doesn't start to break away and dominate AI? Regardless, the 'Anti-Google AI Alliance' would certainly grow stronger with this news. Alexa powered by not just Anthropic, but OpenAI too...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 It seems more likely that they would simply have Anthropic and OpenAI models behind-the-scenes powering Alexa, just as is the case right now with Claude. Still, if they did this deal, it seems like unlike with Apple, they'd want to tout it? Maybe simply having the best possible voice assistant (thanks to the best combination of tech) would be enough? ↩