Google invests $300mn in Anthropic to face ChatGPT

The competition between Google and Microsoft for the AI future of technology continues to heat up. While Microsoft is firmly entangled with ChatGPT's creator, OpenAI, Google may have reached out to a company founded by former OpenAI employees: little-known Anthropic.

According to a Financial Times report, as of late 2022, Google invested approximately $300 million in the startup, though the news was not informed at the time. In exchange for the money, Google got a 10 per cent stake in the firm, and Anthropic must buy cloud computing resources from the search giant, the FT says.

This dynamic is just like the alliance between Microsoft and OpenAI. There, OpenAI provides the research expertise, while Microsoft provides billions of dollars in investment and access to its gigantic cloud platform, which is required to train the latest compute-intensive AI models.

Anthropic is also developing its own general-purpose chatbot: a potential rival to ChatGPT called Claude. (Claude is in closed beta, but you can read a comparison between Anthropic's and OpenAI's systems here.) However, it's unclear if Google plans to integrate Claude into its services as Microsoft does with ChatGPT. Google already has a lot of in-house experience developing AI language systems, and the FT suggests that one motivation for the deal is to develop Google's cloud computing business.

In any case, we can expect to hear more about the future of Google's AI very soon. The company will hold an event on the subject next week, on February 8. And we'll see more from Microsoft in the near future about their plans to add ChatGPT to Bing.