Google follows its $300M investment and Amazon’s $4B commitment with a new $2B investment into Anthropic, the company behind Claude 2.
Google bets big on AI startup Anthropic by promising an up to $2 billion investment, following Amazon’s announcement to invest up to $4 billion into Anthropic and its own previous investment of $300 million for a 10% stake. This investment is in the form of $500 million cash upfront and $1.5 billion over time.
Anthropic is the company behind ChatGPT-competitor Claude 2, which has been touted as one of the most reliable AI chatbot tools out there.
Notably, Anthropic has received funding from companies like Salesforce and Zoom apart from Amazon and Google, and continues to be an industry leader, being used extensively by Slack, Notion, and Quora for their own AI tools.
Founded by ex-OpenAI vice president of research Dario Amodei and his sister, ex-OpenAI vice president of safety and policy, the company was quick to raise a $450 million round in May, and according to the latest estimates, was valued at $4.1 billion. It was initially funded by Sam Bankman Fried of FTX. After the collapse of FTX, the company sought new investors and tech giants were more than happy to oblige.
The WSJ broke the news (link—paywalled) on October 27, noting how tech giants are placing bigger bets on AI startups in the race.
Anthropic had also signed a deal with Google Cloud worth over $3 million.
As per filings with the US SEC, Amazon detailed how it has invested $1.25 billion in Anthropic already.
