Google to invest $300m in ChatGPT Competitor

According to reports, Google is working on investing $300 million in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, which is working on a competitor to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

More specifically, the investment will be for the AI model Claude.

It is reported that Google will take a stake of around 10%. The new funding will value the San Francisco-based company at around $5 billion.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said:

“We’re partnering with Google Cloud to support the next phase of Anthropic, where we’re going to deploy our AI systems to a larger set of people.

“This partnership gives us the cloud infrastructure performance and scale we need.”

The partnership is designed so that the companies can co-develop AI computing systems.

Amodei added: “We are eager to use the Google Cloud infrastructure to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.

“This partnership with Google Cloud will let us build a more robust AI platform.”

Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former leaders of OpenAI.

In January 2023, the company released a limited test of Claude which the firm hoped would compete with OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Thomas Kurian, chief executive officer of Google Cloud, said:

“AI has evolved from academic research to become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, creating new opportunities for growth and improved services across all industries.

“Google Cloud is providing open infrastructure for the next generation of AI startups, and our partnership with Anthropic is a great example of how we’re helping users and businesses tap into the power of reliable and responsible AI.”

Such deals provide more established companies a chance to access AI systems in development.

In turn, the AI startups make the most of the funding and cloud-computing resources that the tech giants offer.

Anthropic’s Claude has not yet been released to the public but the company has stated that it plans to make the chatbot more available “in the coming months.”

Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, said:

“I’m excited by the AI-driven leaps we’re about to unveil in Search and beyond.”

He added that Google intended to release chatbots “in the coming weeks and months as a companion to search.”

Previously, Swiss banking giant UBS reported that ChatGPT may have surpassed 100 million monthly active users at the end of January 2023, making it possibly the fastest-growing app in history.