According to reports, the search engine major has made an initial investment of $500m and has also committed to contribute an additional $1.5bn over time in the American AI safety and research firm, which has built a chatbot called Claude
Google plans to invest up to $2bn in US-based Anthropic. (Credit: Sikander/Wikimedia Commons)
Search engine major Google has reportedly agreed to make an investment of up to $2bn in US-based artificial intelligence (AI) safety and research company Anthropic.
Google has made an initial investment of $500m in Anthropic and committed to contribute an additional $1.5bn over time, reported Reuters, citing a spokesperson for the AI firm.
Earlier this year, Anthropic partnered with Google Cloud to develop AI computing systems. Google Cloud was also selected by the AI company as its preferred cloud provider.
Besides, it was reported that Google made an investment of nearly $300m in late 2022 for a stake of 10% in Anthropic. The AI firm has built a chatbot called Claude, which is considered to be a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Last month, Amazon announced an investment of up to $4bn in Anthropic while taking a minority ownership stake in the AI firm.
Both companies aim to bring together their technology and expertise in safer generative AI to expedite the development of Anthropic’s future foundation models and make them available extensively to AWS customers.
In another development, Bloomberg News citing a Google executive’s testimony during the US Department of Justice’s antitrust trial, reported that the company paid $26.3bn to other firms in 2021. This was to make sure that Google’s search engine was the default on web browsers and mobile phones, as per the testimony.
According to the report, Google senior executive Prabhakar Raghavan said that the payments that Google made for the default status has surged by more than three folds since 2014.
Last week, Google’s parent company Alphabet reported a net income of $19.69bn for the third quarter of 2023 (Q3 2023), a 41.5% increase compared to $13.91bn for the same quarter of the previous year.
The holding company registered revenues of $76.69bn for Q3 2023 compared to $69.09bn in Q3 2022.