Google invests another $1 billion in Anthropic, according to FT. Having a plan B was never a bad idea

In 2021, several former OpenAI employees decided to set it up on their own. Among them were siblings Daniela and Dario Amodei, who led the founding of Anthropic. Since then, their work at Claude in particular and in artificial intelligence has made them leaders in the sector. So much so that even Google, which has its own AI project, opted for them. And now they have done it again.

First investments. In April 2023, with the relatively recent release of ChatGPT, invested 400 million dollars in Anthropic. That number would end up going up up to 2 billion in total at the end of that year, which consolidated the promising commitment to this AI startup.

Another 1 billion. As indicated Financial TimesGoogle has invested another $1 billion in Anthropic. The data comes from people related to the movement, and the operation—if confirmed—would allow Google to reinforce its participation in the company.

Rival and plan B. Claude is a fantastic AI chatbot that has been gaining popularity in recent months and is now one of the benchmarks, but it rivals Gemini, Google’s model and chatbot. It is a unique situation in which Google has Anthropic as a rival but also as a potential ally if needed.

Diversifying is always a good idea. As pointed out in the FT, this operation allows Google to diversify its interests and not put all its eggs in the same basket.

And Anthropic expects more financial support. According to this newspaper, Anthropic is about to close a separate investment round of another $2 billion. Lightspeed Venture Partners would participate in it. This round is expected to triple Anthropic’s valuation and place it at around $60 billion.

Amazon, even more relevant. Google’s investment is already very relevant, but Amazon is the main protagonist here. The company led by Andy Jassy has invested $8 billion in the startup, and Claude models are expected to end up being an integral part of the future version of Alexa that keeps delaying again and again.

They already have gas for one season. These investments will allow Anthropic to continue advancing the development of its AI models. The “Computer Use” function presented at the end of October 2024 showed a future potential full of AI agents to do things for us on the computer, and the firm certainly seems to be heading in the right direction in this area.

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