In response to Amazon’s strong announcement that it will invest up to $4 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, Google has made its own big bet on artificial intelligence. The tech giant plans to invest $2 billion in the same company in a bid to catch up with Amazon and Microsoft in the lucrative cloud market.
This means that in the last year alone Anthropic has raised almost 7 billion dollars, highlights The Wall Street Journal. Google has previously invested around $500 million in rival OpenAI, adding fuel to the AI arms race, leaving $1.5 billion up for grabs for startups trying to make the next big breakthrough in new technology.
Founded by former OpenAI engineers in 2021, Anthropic also signed a multi-year deal with Google Cloud worth more than $3 billion, according to an anonymous source. The deal was closed several months before the announcement of new investments.
Amazon, Google and Microsoft are increasingly allying themselves with Anthropic or OpenAI, the two startups with the greatest ambitions for future artificial intelligence models.
In January, Microsoft signed a landmark deal to invest $10 billion in OpenAI, the creator of the ChatGPT bot, adding a 49% stake in the company to the $3 billion already invested.
In addition to tech giants and FTX Sam Bankman Fried, until the crypto exchange crashed last year, Spark Capital, Menlo Ventures, Salesforce Ventures and SK Telecom also invested in AI virtual assistant developer Claude – Anthropic. This year the company was valued at $4 billion.
Google’s explosive announcement comes after parent company Alphabet’s shares plunged nearly 10% after it announced Tuesday that Google Cloud’s third-quarter sales growth was lower than expected.
This has dampened shareholder enthusiasm for AI-based product development. But the company has no plans to stop. In addition to Anthropic, Google is investing in other AI startups: Runway, Hugging Face, etc.
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
