Google has invested an additional $1 billion in OpenAI competitor Anthropic

Spread the love

Open the editor’s digest for free

Google is making a new investment of more than $1 billion in OpenAI rival Anthropomorphic, boosting its position at the startup as Silicon Valley titans rush to create cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.

The Alphabet-owned search behemoth had already paid about $2 billion to Anthropoc and was now increasing its stake in the group, four people familiar with the situation said.

Anthroposic, known for its Claude family of AI models, is one of the leading startups in the new AI company building tools to generate text, images and code to respond to user queries.

Google invented the technology on which models like Cloud and OpenAI’s GPT4 are built, but it has lagged behind in the race to bring its powerful technology to market. The Anthropogenic investment is part of the Silicon Valley company’s efforts to expand its AI business and take on deep-pocketed rivals including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon.

In addition to Silicon Valley venture capital investors led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, Anthroponic was also in the process of additional funding from Silicon Valley venture capital investors, who are expected to triple the startup’s valuation to $60 billion. The agreement.

The startup is in fierce competition with rivals OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI, both of which raised more than $10 billion last year, as well as Facebook parent Meta and Microsoft.

The new round of funding from Google into Anthroponic adds to Amazon’s $8 billion investment, the largest investment the ecommerce giant has announced over the past 18 months. Amazon is working to embed cloud models into the next-generation version of the Alexa speaker.

The close relationship between AI startups and their tech backers has been unraveled by the Federal Trade Commission during the Joe Biden administration.

Under outgoing Commissioner Lena Khan, the FTC has targeted investments from Google and Amazon, Anthroponic and Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, while assessing the deals’ impact on competition in the nascent sector. But as Khan steps down in the coming weeks, businessmen are growing more confident in their ability to forge ties.

Anthropic’s revenue hit $1 billion in annual revenue in December, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s financials.

Still, investors aren’t expecting Anthropic or its rivals to turn a profit any time soon, given the high costs of developing leading AI models. As new breakthroughs come, they believe the technology could eventually be worth trillions of dollars.

“I am convinced that now more than ever we are closer to powerful abilities. . . AI systems are better than all humans in almost every task,” Anthropotec CEO Dario Amodei said in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

Founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees, Anthroponic has tried to differentiate itself from its competitors by focusing on AI security. In recent months, it has fired several employees from OpenAI, including the company’s founder.

The group initially released some features, such as its AI’s ability to control computers, and this year has focused on creating AI agents — software that completes tasks and navigates the web on behalf of a human user — with competitors.

Google and Anthropic declined to comment.