Amazon Web Services (AWS) has defended its strategy of backing competing artificial intelligence firms, with CEO Matt Garman saying the cloud giant is well-versed in managing such conflicts as it deepens investments in both OpenAI and Anthropic. Speaking at the HumanX conference in San Francisco, Garman said Amazon’s recent $50 billion investment in OpenAI — alongside its earlier $8 billion backing of Anthropic — reflects a long-standing approach of partnering and competing simultaneously. “We’ve built this muscle up of how we go to market with our partners,” he said, noting that AWS has historically operated in ecosystems where collaboration and competition coexist.The dual investments come at a time when competition among cloud providers is intensifying, with AI models emerging as a key battleground. For AWS, securing access to leading models was critical. Garman described the OpenAI investment as “almost a matter of life and death,” particularly as rival Microsoft had already integrated both OpenAI and Anthropic models into its cloud platform.What makes Amazon’s investment interesting is that OpenAI and Anthropic are two of the biggest ‘enemy companies’ in Silicon Valley right now. The CEOs of the two companies — Sam Altman and Dario Amodei — have publicly bickered with each other. Anthropic ‘famously’ took out series of Superbowl ads making fun of OpenAI’s flagship product ChatGPT that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman called ‘deceptive’ and ‘clearly dishonest’.Coming back to Amazon, AWS is now positioning itself as a neutral platform offering access to multiple AI models, while also building its own capabilities. A key part of this strategy is the development of “model routing” services, which allow customers to automatically switch between different AI models depending on the task.Under this approach, more advanced models may be used for complex reasoning or planning tasks, while cheaper, lighter models handle simpler functions such as code completion. The goal is to optimise both performance and cost — a combination that is increasingly important as enterprises scale their use of AI tools. “I think that is where the world will go,” Garman said.
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However, the strategy also raises questions about how cloud providers balance their roles as platform operators, investors and competitors. By offering access to third-party models while developing their own, companies like Amazon and Microsoft risk creating tensions with partners whose products they host.Garman dismissed such concerns, arguing that AWS has long navigated similar dynamics. In its early years, the company relied heavily on partnerships to build out its cloud offerings, even as it developed competing in-house services. Over time, this approach has become widely accepted across the industry.In the last couple of years, it is not uncommon for companies to both collaborate and compete within the same ecosystem. Even Oracle, a major cloud rival, offers some of its services on AWS — a scenario that would have been unlikely in the early days of cloud computing.The pattern is now extending to the AI sector, where investor overlap is becoming the norm. Anthropic’s recent $30 billion funding round, for instance, included several backers who also support OpenAI, including Microsoft.