---
title: "Picking Teams in AI"
description: "Cloud giants partner with AI leaders: Microsoft-OpenAI, Google-Anthropic, Databricks-Mosaic. How cloud partnerships reshape startup infrastructure decisions."
categories: ["AI","SaaS","trends"]
keywords: ["Databricks","Mosaic","Microsoft","OpenAI","cloud partnerships","LLM infrastructure","SaaS","venture capital","AI trends","cloud computing"]
ai_summary: "Explore how cloud giants are forming strategic partnerships with AI leaders, reshaping startup infrastructure decisions."
date: 2023-06-26
lastmod: 2026-07-28
canonical_url: https://www.tomtunguz.com/ai-consolidation/
author: "Tomasz Tunguz"
---

Yesterday, Databricks announced its intent to acquire [Mosaic for $1.3b](https://techcrunch.com/2023/06/26/databricks-picks-up-mosaicml-an-openai-competitor-for-1-3b/). Perhaps not coincidentally, Snowflake announced a [deepened partnership with Nvidia](https://venturebeat.com/ai/snowflake-nvidia-partner-enable-generative-ai-application-development-snowflake-data-cloud/?utm_campaign=Oktopost-twitter-Snowflake&utm_content=Oktopost-PR+-+Media+Articles&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter) to offer customers models & training on Nvidia's Nemo platform.

Clouds are picking teams in one of the most important dislocations in software.

**Cloud <- -> LLM Infrastructure**      
Microsoft <- -> OpenAI     
Snowflake <- -> Nvidia     
Databricks <- ->  Mosaic     
Google <- -> Anthropic     
Oracle <- -> Cohere     
Amazon <- -> HuggingFace

Microsoft has invested over $10b, plus significant development efforts to work with OpenAI. In addition, Microsoft & Snowflake announced a deeper AI [go-to-market partnership with Snowflake]( https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20230626764265/en/Snowflake-Expands-Partnership-with-Microsoft-to-Bring-Large-Scale-Generative-AI-Models-and-Increased-Machine-Learning-Capabilities-to-the-Data-Cloud). 

Snowflake's partnership with Nvidia positions Snowflake's cloud as a broader infrastructure platform.

DataBricks, whose business revolves around Spark operating in customer environments, has announced plans to acquire Mosaic, a vertically integrated model training & management system that functions on similar workloads.

Google has invested [hundreds of millions into Anthropic](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-02-03/google-invests-almost-400-million-in-ai-startup-anthropic), complementing its efforts with Google Brain.

Oracle has paralleled Microsoft's OpenAI partnership with Cohere, investing & seeking to build a product for [Oracle's cloud with Cohere](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/oracles-answer-to-the-microsoft-openai-alliance-cozying-up-to-cohere).

Amazon has announced [HuggingFace LLMs on their Sagemaker product](https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/machine-learning/announcing-the-launch-of-new-hugging-face-llm-inference-containers-on-amazon-sagemaker/), embracing the open-source community. 

Cloudflare, which has seen tremendous interest in its R2 storage product for model training because of a lower cost storage infrastructure, had [partnered with Mosaic](https://blog.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-r2-mosaicml-train-llms-anywhere-faster-cheaper/). It's unclear how the Databricks acquisition might change that relationship.

Cloud infrastructure players are picking teams within the infrastructure layer. Most major cloud players have picked an LLM partner & perhaps will choose multiple. 

For startups building LLM-based applications & infrastructure, this alters the calculus of selecting a cloud. Five years ago, many startups defaulted to AWS for the generous credits, broad catalog, & rapid pace of innovation. 

LLM-enabled apps require customer data to train, propelling data security to the top of the list for most enterprise buyers. Startups may begin to pick clouds to reach a particular class of customer, the security promises the underlying platforms provide, & then available algorithms & cost. 

Access to particular models may be a consideration, but given the rapid advances in open-source that advantage will likely [erode over time.](https://tomtunguz.com/my-algo-is-better-than-your-algo/)