Google has invested about $300mn in artificial intelligence start-up Anthropic, making it the latest tech giant to throw its money and computing power behind a new generation of companies trying to claim a place in the booming field of “generative AI”.
The deal involves Google taking a stake of about 10 per cent in the start-up and boosts Anthropic’s finances at a time when it is buying substantial computing resources from the search company’s cloud computing division. Google confirmed it had made an investment and that it had a large cloud contract with Anthropic, but did not provide further details*.
Google’s move highlights the influence that a small number of Big Tech companies have assumed over other companies working on AI, which need access to cloud computing platforms to handle the giant AI models developed by groups such as Anthropic.
The search company’s investment also echoes the $1bn cash-for-computing investment that Microsoft made in OpenAI three years ago.
The Microsoft deal set OpenAI on a path to building a series of breakthrough AI systems, culminating in the launch late last year of ChatGPT, a chatbot that can converse with users through text. The software giant followed up last month with what it described as a second, “multiyear, multibillion-dollar” investment in the company.
