Google To Invest $2B In Anthropic As AI Funding Wars Heat Up

It will be hard for any startup to catch OpenAI when it comes to funding dollars, but it seems Anthropic is willing to give it a go.

Previous investor Google has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in the OpenAI competitor, per a Wall Street Journal report late Friday. The deal includes $500 million upfront plus an additional $1.5 billion more over time, according to the report. No valuation was reported.

Earlier this month, The Information reported the new round could value the company at between $20 billion and $30 billion.

The news comes just a month after Anthropic — a ChatGPT rival with its AI assistant Claude — inked a deal with Amazon for the e-commerce and cloud titan to invest up to $4 billion in the AI startup. In that deal, the immediate investment was reported as $1.25 billion, with either party having the right to trigger another $2.75 billion in funding, Reuters reported.

Big money

Of course, both deals still lag behind the massive $10 billion investment from Microsoft into OpenAI back in January.

However, Anthropic has been doing its best to catch up. In February, it was reported that Google had invested between $300 million and $400 million in the startup. In May, the company raised a $450 million Series C led by Spark Capital. In August, Anthropic raised a $100 million round from SK Telecom.

The Amazon deal followed late last month.

The new deal with Google is yet another example of big tech’s insatiable appetite when it comes to generative AI. Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Nvidia, Salesforce 1 and others have all invested billions of dollars in AI startups — either directly from the company or through their respective VC arms.

That is unlikely to stop anytime soon as the generative AI war continues to heat up.