Google has decided to invest another billion dollars in Anthropic, four sources told the Financial Times, bringing the total cost of the project to more than three billion dollars. Both companies declined to comment. Google is using Anthropic’s Claude AI models in Vertex AI, an AI-powered development platform.
Amazon also invested four billion in Anthropic to integrate its Claude AI models into the next generation of Alexa speakers. Other sources report that Anthropic is also in talks with Lightspeed Venture Partners to raise another two billion. These investments would make Anthropic worth 60 billion. Nevertheless, investors do not believe that Anthropic or its competitors will become profitable in the near future due to the high cost of developing AI models.
Google invented transformers, a type of neural network that became the basis of technology for AI models, back in 2017. Despite some success of such models as Gemini, Imagen, Chirp, Veo, and others, Google does not have such a significant position in the generative AI market.
This number of large tech companies backing AI startups has worried the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which investigated Alphabet, Google’s parent company, for its first $2.3 billion investment in Anthropic. However, as the Financial Times notes, FTC Commissioner Lina Khan, who had a reputation for aggressive antitrust enforcement, resigned as head of the agency after the Trump regime came to power, which may mean that similar deals in the future will not be subject to the same scrutiny.
