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Anthropic, an AI startup backed by Amazon, said on Monday that it would launch its AI assistant Cloud in Europe on Tuesday. It will be available to individuals and businesses via the web and via the iPhone app.
A paid, subscription-based version of Anthropic's Claude Assistant, called Claude Pro, will be available to users who want access to all of its models, including Claude 3 Opus, Anthropic's most advanced offering.
Anthropic is also launching its own business-focused Claude Team subscription-based plans, which cost €28 ($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 in a statement on Tuesday.
Artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly and officials are concerned about its impact on jobs and privacy.
The European Union Parliament earlier this year passed the world's first major set of basic regulations governing new technology. The Artificial Intelligence Law seeks, among other things, to define and apply rules according to the levels of risks posed by artificial intelligence, dividing risk categories into low, medium, high and unacceptable.
Anthropic said her assistant, Claude, is fluent in French, German, Italian, Spanish and other European languages.
While Claude.ai is already available for free on both 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 interesting generative AI companies on the market, with investors valuing the company at a whopping $18.4 billion in March. That month, Amazon announced a $2.75 billion investment in the startup, bringing its total investment in the company to date to $4 billion.
Amazon's investment in Anthropic has raised concerns from some regulators, who worry it could reduce the company's independence.
In the United Kingdom, regulators are assessing whether Amazon's investment, its partnership with Anthropic, and the deals Microsoft has struck with AI producers may constitute effective mergers that could reduce competition.
Amazon says its partnership with Anthropic constitutes a limited corporate investment, not a merger. Microsoft denies that its deals with AI startups OpenAI and Mistral and hiring from Inflection amount to a merger.
