Amazon-backed Anthropic launches its Claude AI chatbot across Europe

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup backed by Amazon, said Monday it’s launching its generative AI assistant Claude in Europe on Tuesday. It will be available to individuals and businesses through the web and via an 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 its models, including Claude 3 Opus, Anthropic’s most advanced offering.

Anthropic is also launching its business-focused Claude Team subscription-based plans, which cost 28 euros ($30) a month before value-added tax (VAT).

“We’ve designed Claude with a strong commitment to accuracy, security and privacy,” Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder at Anthropic, said in a statement Tuesday.

AI has been advancing rapidly and officials are concerned about the impact on jobs and privacy.

The European Union Parliament earlier this year passed the world’s first major set of regulatory ground rules to govern the new technology. The AI Act seeks to, among other things, identify and apply rules in accordance with the levels of risk AI poses, dividing categories of risk into low, medium, high and unacceptable.

Anthropic said its Claude assistant is highly 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 U.K., Anthropic says this is the first time the product is launching for users in the EU and non-EU countries like Norway, Switzerland, and Iceland.

Anthropic has quickly become one of the buzziest and most-hyped generative AI companies in the market, with investors valuing the firm at a whopping $18.4 billion as recently as March. That month, Amazon announced a $2.75 billion investment in the startup, taking its total invested in the firm to date to $4 billion.

Amazon’s investment into Anthropic has attracted concerns from some regulators, who worry it could lessen the company’s independence.

In the United Kingdom, regulators are assessing whether Amazon’s investment and partnership with Anthropic, and deals struck by Microsoft with generative AI firms, may constitute effective mergers that could lessen competition.

Amazon says its partnership with Anthropic constitutes a limited corporate investment, not a merger. Microsoft denies its deals with AI startups OpenAI and Mistral and hiring from Inflection are equivalent to merging.