Amazon Reportedly Looks Beyond Claude for Some AI Workloads

Amazon is reportedly considering alternatives to Anthropic’s Claude models for some internal AI workloads, as the company looks for ways to reduce costs.

According to The Information, Amazon may use OpenAI models or its own Nova AI models in some services instead of relying only on Claude. The reported evaluation comes despite Amazon being one of Anthropic’s biggest investors and one of its most important cloud partners.

The possible shift appears to be linked to the cost of using Claude inside Amazon services. Anthropic has reportedly raised the cost of using its models, prompting Amazon to look at more affordable options for certain workloads.

Amazon’s Anthropic Partnership Remains Important

The report does not necessarily mean Amazon’s relationship with Anthropic is weakening.

Amazon is not only a Claude customer. It is also a major Anthropic investor and infrastructure partner. Anthropic has committed to spend more than $100 billion over 10 years on AWS technologies, including Amazon’s Trainium AI chips.

That commitment makes the relationship much deeper than a standard customer-vendor deal. Anthropic depends heavily on AWS for cloud infrastructure, while Amazon benefits from having Claude models available across its AI services.

Nova Gives Amazon an In-House Option

Amazon has already been building its own AI model family through Nova.

The company announced Nova in late 2024 for Amazon Bedrock. The models were designed for text, image, and video tasks, giving AWS customers a wider set of AI options inside Amazon’s cloud.

Amazon originally positioned Nova around cost efficiency and lower latency. Those two areas could make Nova attractive for internal workloads that do not need the most expensive frontier model available.

Using Nova would also give Amazon more control over pricing, deployment, optimization, and hardware integration. That could matter as Amazon continues investing in Trainium chips and other AWS AI infrastructure.

OpenAI Is Now a More Realistic AWS Option

OpenAI has also become a more practical option for AWS customers.

Earlier this year, OpenAI brought its latest models and Codex coding agent to Amazon Bedrock. That move followed changes to OpenAI’s previously more restrictive Microsoft cloud arrangement.

OpenAI’s presence on Bedrock gives AWS customers access to more model options without leaving Amazon’s cloud. It also means Amazon can compare Claude, Nova, and OpenAI models more directly for cost, speed, and performance.

As for OpenAI, the company has announced GPT-5.6 in limited preview, adding another advanced model option for companies evaluating AI systems.

Amazon is not the only major tech company looking at more affordable alternatives. Microsoft is reportedly considering using DeepSeek V4 for some AI workloads, showing that even the largest AI buyers are trying to balance performance with cost.

For Amazon, the question may not be whether Claude remains important. The bigger question is where Claude makes financial sense and where OpenAI or Nova models could do the job at a lower price.

Amazon May Not Fully Switch Away From Claude

The report does not suggest that Amazon has made a final decision.

It also remains unclear whether Amazon would fully move any major workloads from Claude to OpenAI or Nova models. The company could simply use different models for different tasks.

That would allow Amazon to keep Claude in areas where Anthropic’s models perform best, while using Nova or OpenAI models for workloads where cost matters more.

For now, Amazon’s evaluation appears to reflect commercial pressure rather than a damaged partnership. Claude, Nova, and OpenAI could all play a role in Amazon’s AI strategy as the company looks for the right balance between performance, cost, and control.