AWS is reportedly facing criticism regarding the limits it imposes on customers’ use of Anthropic’s artificial intelligence (AI) models. These limits have been described as “arbitrary, ” suggesting that AWS either lacks sufficient server capacity or is reserving some resources for larger clients, according to a report by The Information on Monday (April 21). The article cited four AWS customers and two consulting firms whose clients use AWS. According to the report, some customers utilizing AWS’ Bedrock application programming interface (API) service have encountered error messages with increasing frequency over the past year and a half.

However, the report also referenced an AWS enterprise customer who stated they had not experienced any such constraints. Kate Vorys, AWS Senior PR Manager for Emerging Tech, told The Information that tens of thousands of customers are using Anthropic models through Bedrock, and the rate limits in Bedrock are designed to ensure customers receive “fair access” to AI models. “The Information’s suggestion that rate limits are a response to capacity constraints, or that Amazon Bedrock is not equipped to support customers’ needs, is false, ” Vorys stated, according to the report. AWS introduced Bedrock in April 2023, describing it as a service that provides customers access to foundational models developed by AWS and other companies, enabling them to select the model best suited to their needs and build their own generative AI applications. In September 2023, Amazon announced plans to invest up to $4 billion in Anthropic as part of a broader collaboration between the two companies. This partnership includes Anthropic utilizing AWS chips, making AWS its primary cloud provider for “mission-critical workloads, ” and offering AWS customers access to future generations of its foundational models. In November, Amazon and Anthropic revealed an expanded partnership that included an additional $4 billion investment by Amazon in Anthropic, bringing its total investment to $8 billion, with Anthropic designating AWS as its primary training partner.