Google Strengthens Anthropic Ties With $2 Billion Investment

Google could reportedly invest another $2 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) firm Anthropic.

The tech giant, which already invests in Anthropic, has already given the OpenAI competitor $500 million and agreed to contribute another $1.5 billion over time, Reuters reported Friday (Oct. 27), citing a company spokesperson.

As the report noted, Google has already invested in Anthropic, with this new funding spotlighting its effort to compete with Microsoft — which is a major OpenAI investor — amid a Big Tech scramble to add AI to their products.

A spokesperson for Google declined to comment further when reached by PYMNTS. 

The news follows reports from earlier in the month that Anthropic was seeking a $2 billion infusion from Google. The company has also gotten an investment worth up to $4 billion from Amazon and has been valued at more than $20 billion.

“The big lure of Anthropic, relative to other foundational AI models out on the market from competitors like OpenAI, Google and Meta,” PYMNTS wrote earlier this month, “is the firm’s commitment to building and deploying what it alleges are generative AI capabilities with stronger built-in guardrails, thanks to its training approach centered around ‘Constitutional AI.’” 

As that report noted, AI models are inherently prone to hallucination and fabrication, and even though mistakes are slightly more acceptable in consumer-facing applications when users are just playing around, they can have far more dire consequences inside an enterprise workflow or in more sensitive sectors like healthcare. 

Erik Duhaime, co-founder and CEO of data annotation provider Centaur Labs, discussed this issue with PYMNTS in a recent interview.

“If you want to write a song in the style of Bob Dylan, or virtually try on a T-shirt, it’s one thing if the specs are wrong. But it’s another thing entirely if you’re told you have cancer when you don’t, or an AI model tells you that you don’t have cancer and you do.”

In July Amazon and Anthropic signed the White House’s pledge to foster the safe, secure, responsible and effective development of AI.

Meanwhile, another tech giant — Facebook parent Meta Platforms — said last week that AI will be a focus in the year ahead.

“In terms of investment priorities,” CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an earnings call, “AI will be our biggest investment area in 2024 — in engineering and computing resources.”

The company plans to de-prioritize at least some non-AI projects in favor of those focused on the emerging technology — and will be hiring for AI positions next year.