The Globe and Mail reports in its Tuesday edition that Amazon is investing up to $4-billion in cash in the high-profile start-up Anthropic, in its effort to compete with growing cloud rivals on artificial intelligence (all figures U.S.). A Reuters dispatch to The Globe says that Amazon's employees and cloud customers will gain early access to technology from Anthropic as part of the deal, which they can infuse into their businesses. The San Francisco-based start-up also committed to rely primarily on Amazon's cloud services, including training its future AI models on large quantities of proprietary chips it would buy from the online retailing and computing giant. The chief executive officers of Amazon's cloud division and Anthropic said the immediate investment will be $1.25-billion, with either party having the authority to trigger another $2.75-billion in financing by Amazon. Amazon said it would not gain a board seat and that its stake amounted to a minority position. The news represents perhaps Amazon's biggest answer yet to challenges from Microsoft (OpenAI) and Alphabet's Google, smaller cloud rivals that have marketed or developed powerful AI this year. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI executives.