It is no secret that Google is interested in artificial intelligence. The company has made several announcements over the years. It felt like the company was at the forefront of things, but only when OpenAI kicked in the door with ChatGPT did the AI race truly kick off. Now Google is hoping to close the gap and invest in OpenAI’s rival by dropping another cool billion into Anthropic.
Not Google’s first investment
Anthropic is viewed as OpenAI’s rival in the AI foundation model space. It is also not Google’s first investment in the company. Google has made several investments over the years. It is estimated that Google has spent more than $3 billion to invest in Anthropic, and it doesn’t seem like things are slowing down.
Google is also not alone in its investment in the AI company. Other tech giants such as Amazon have also made similar huge investments of their own. The online retailer has reportedly spent $4 billion investing in Anthropic, where it is looking to integrate its Claude AI models into future Alexa-powered smart speakers.
The sudden and massive influx of investments has caught the attention of the FTC. The regulatory body previously launched an investigation into Alphabet’s (Google’s parent company) initial $2.3 billion investment into Anthropic.
Why is Google funding Anthropic?
Most of you are probably familiar with Google’s AI efforts, such as Gemini. It might seem strange that Google would invest a billion dollars in Anthropic, which, on the surface, looks like a rival in the AI space. There are several reasons for this.
Firstly, both Google and Anthropic are rivals of OpenAI. As the saying goes, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Google investing in Anthropic is a way of ensuring that OpenAI doesn’t get too far ahead. It’s similar to how Google paid Apple billions of dollars a year to remain the default search engine on Safari. Or how Google creates apps for iOS despite being a rival to its own Android mobile platform.
Secondly, despite Google’s vast resources, the company cannot do everything on its own. It’s why many tech giants tend to buy up existing companies and integrate their technology into their own products rather than building their own from scratch. Google’s Vertex uses Anthropic’s Claude AI, which it sells to businesses looking to build and deploy their own machine-learning models.
Lastly, Anthropic designed Claude AI with safety in mind to minimize harmful outputs. Using AI can feel like a magical experience, but its answers are sometimes wrong. This is sometimes the result of hallucinations. Google investing in Anthropic could be for ethical reasons, where the company might want to adopt Claude AI’s safety-first approach into Gemini.
