Amazon may have been sued this week by the Federal Trade Commission and 17 states for allegedly inflating prices, but the tech-giant stayed the course in its AI push by investing up to $4 billion in San Francisco-based start-up Anthropic.

Founded by former OpenAI executives Dario and Daniela Amodei, the deal further enhances the online retailer's presence in generative artificial intelligence and its dominance in the cloud industry.

It's a strategic move for Amazon CEO Andy Jassy, who is trying to fend off smaller rivals targeting his cloud service, AWS.

Microsoft is pouring billions into ChatGPT while Google has made search its number-one priority.

"Our continued leadership in AI and our excellence in engineering and innovation are driving the next evolution of search and improving all our services," Google CEO Sundar Pichai said during the company's most recent earnings call.

Anthropic's top product named Claude excels at an array of tasks, including sophisticated dialogue, creative content generation, complex reasoning and detailed instruction.

Meanwhile, the technology can process information from industries like manufacturing and aerospace, agriculture and consumer goods. Claude can also manage technical, domain-specific documents for the finance, legal and health care industries, the company said. Companies like LexisNexis Legal & Professional, Lonely Planet and Bridgewater Associates are already working with the AI software provider's Claude 2 model.

Amazon shares have advanced 50% so far this year, besting the Nasdaq Composite's 12% rise.