The Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) has extended its partnership with Amazon-backed artificial intelligence (AI) research lab, Anthropic – best known for developing large language model ‘Claude’ – with the pair committing to levelling up the bank’s in-house AI capability.
CBA group chief information officer Gavin Munroe said the enhanced strategy partnership, which includes an undisclosed investment in Anthropic, “will help our teams to accelerate our AI capability”.
This will include expanded capabilities for customer support and fraud detection, whilst also exploring new use cases for the technology.
Munroe added: “With our shared values and vision, this partnership is also intended to uplift and unlock AI potential for our engineers, who will have an opportunity to work with Anthropic’s AI experts to explore how we can accelerate how we build the products to serve and protect our customers, including how we can further protect customers and communities from scams and fraud.”
As well, with direct access to Anthropic thought leaders, Munroe said the deal will help to [accelerate] professional development” for CBA’s technologists and ensure the bank remains “at the forefront of safe and responsible AI”.
While financial details of the investment were not disclosed, CBA did earlier this year renew a five-year deal with AWS, a major investor in Anthropic, to secure the cloud-services giant as its preferred provider.
AWS recently announced a US$4 billion ($6.3 billion) investment in Anthropic, on top of an earlier US$4 billion commitment announced at the beginning of 2024.
As part of the deal, AWS agreed to the adoption of the Claude family of models on AWS, while Anthropic reconfirmed AWS as its primary training partner, in addition to continuing as its primary cloud provider.
The AI researcher, founded as a break-away LLM developer by former employees of OpenAI, announced a Series E raise valuing it at US$61.5 billion ($97 billion).
Commenting on the renewed CBA partnership, Anthropic chief financial officer Krishna Rao Anthropic’s teams “look forward to working closely with CBA’s engineers and data scientists to explore innovative applications of our technology, particularly in critical areas like fraud prevention and customer service enhancement.”
“By combining Anthropic’s advanced AI capabilities with CBA’s deep financial expertise we can create more personalised experiences for customers while maintaining the highest standards for safety and security.”
