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Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Amazon, announced on Monday the launch of its generative AI assistant Claude in Europe on Tuesday. It will be accessible to individuals and businesses via the web and via an iPhone application.
A paid subscription version of Anthropic’s Claude Assistant, called Claude Pro, will be available for users who want access to all of its models, including Claude 3 Opus, Anthropic’s most advanced offering.
Anthropic is also launching its professional Claude Team subscription plans, which cost 28 euros ($30) per month before value-added tax (VAT).
“We designed Claude with a strong commitment to accuracy, security and privacy,” Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, said Tuesday.
AI is advancing rapidly and officials are concerned about its impact on jobs and privacy.
The European Union Parliament earlier this year adopted the world’s first major set of regulatory ground rules to govern new technology. The AI Act aims, among other things, to identify and enforce rules based on the levels of risk that AI poses, dividing risk categories into low, medium, high and unacceptable.
Anthropic said its assistant Claude is very fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other European languages.
While Claude.ai is already available for free on web and mobile in the UK, Anthropic says this is the first time the product has been launched for users in the EU and non-EU countries such as Norway, Switzerland and Iceland.
Anthropic has quickly become one of the hottest and most hyped generative AI companies on the market, with investors valuing the company at $18.4 billion as recently as March. That month, Amazon announced a $2.75 billion investment in the startup, bringing the total amount invested in the company to date to $4 billion.
Amazon’s investment in Anthropic has raised concerns among some regulators, who fear it could diminish the company’s independence.
In the U.K., regulators are evaluating whether Amazon’s investment and partnership with Anthropic, as well as Microsoft’s deals with generative AI companies, can constitute effective mergers that could reduce competition.
Amazon says its partnership with Anthropic constitutes a limited corporate investment and not a merger. Microsoft denies deals with AI startups OpenAI and Mistral and hiring at Inflection amounts to merger.
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