Google deepens commitment to Anthropic with reported $1bn investment

Anthropic has garnered substantial financial support from several prominent investors

The new funding builds on Google’s past investments of $2 billion in Anthropic and 10% ownership stake in the startup, as well as a large cloud contract between the two companies.

Google is strengthening its partnership with generative AI firm Anthropic with a new investment exceeding $1 billion, according to CNBC.

The new funding builds on Google’s past investments of $2 billion in Anthropic (an investment that was the subject of a CMA investigation which was dropped almost as quickly as it was announced) and 10% ownership stake in the startup, as well as a large cloud contract between the two companies.

Anthropic, the AI start-up renowned for its Claude chatbot, continues to consolidate its position in Silicon Valley’s fast-moving AI race. In December the company achieved an annualised revenue of $1 billion, marking a tenfold increase from the previous year. According to sources, this impressive growth has been driven primarily by enterprise sales.

Google's and Amazon’s strategic investments

Anthropic, established by former OpenAI research leaders, has garnered substantial financial support from several prominent investors. Amazon, one of its key backers, committed an additional $4 billion to the start-up in November, raising its total investment to $8 billion. Despite this significant funding, Amazon remains a minority investor without a seat on the company’s board.

Other investors include Lightspeed Venture Partners, which is reportedly leading a $2 billion funding round that would value the company at $60 billion. Anthropic has also partnered with AWS, utilising its Trainium and Inferentia chips to train and deploy its advanced AI models, firmly positioning AWS as the start-up’s primary cloud and training partner.

Claude

Anthropic launched the Claude chatbot in March 2023, a generative AI product comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini. Its popularity has surged as businesses integrate AI tools into operations such as sales, marketing, and customer service.

The start-up has focused on advancing its technology. In October, Anthropic unveiled a feature enabling its AI systems to operate computers similarly to humans. Dubbed “Computer Use,” this capability allows AI to interpret screens, click buttons, input text, navigate the internet, and execute multi-step tasks across software.

The generative AI sector and its key players of Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta, is projected to surpass $1 trillion in revenue over the next decade. Amazon and Microsoft have both heavily invested in the field while simultaneously developing their own AI technologies.

Those pushing for the regulatory guardrails to be taken off the development of generative AI have been cheered by the Trump administration repeal of former President Biden’s Executive Order on the safe, secure and trustworthy development of generative AI.