Google Teams Up with Anthropic to Compete in AI

Alphabet’s Google is making good on its intent to ramp up more quickly in artificial intelligence.

During an earnings call last week, Alphabet execs said to look for more AI focus from Google. They said that without explicitly referring to competitor Microsoft, which continues to invest billions of dollars in OpenAI’s ChatGPT. But the industry consensus is that Google has fallen a bit woefully behind in the AI arms race.

Now the company is trying to make up for that by investing almost $400 million into AI startup Anthropic. (Consider, though, that Microsoft has funneled more than $10 billion into Chat GPT.)

“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,” said Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, in a Feb. 3 press release. “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.”

Neither Google nor Anthropic would comment to Bloomberg on the investment, but they did separately say Anthropic will use Google’s cloud computing services, per Bloomberg. Google gets a stake in Anthropic but Anthropic is not required to use that money on Google’s cloud services, the outlet said.

Anthropic was founded in January 2021 by former OpenAI leaders. Its chatbot, Claude, takes aim at OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Claude is not yet publicly available. Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said on Feb. 2 that Google intends to release AI chatbots soon; consumers will use them “as a companion to search,” he told analysts during the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call.