Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Google has invested nearly $400 million in AI startup Anthropic, which is testing competitors to ChatGPT, the OpenAI chat robot, according to people familiar with the matter.

Google and Anthropic declined to comment on the investment but announced the establishment of a partnership. In this partnership, Anthropic will use Google's cloud computing services. As competition in the field of generative AI (AIGC) is heating up, the deal marks the latest alliance between technology giants and AI startups.

The deal gave Google about 10 per cent of Anthropic, according to people familiar with the matter. Google's move highlights how tech giants have had an impact on other AI research companies. These AI companies need access to large cloud computing platforms to help improve the giant AI model.

Thomas Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said in a statement: "AI has become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, creating new opportunities for growth and service improvement in all industries. Google Cloud is providing an open infrastructure for the next generation of AI startups, and our partnership with Anthropic will be an excellent example of how we can help users and businesses take advantage of the power of reliable and responsible AI. "

Anthropic, founded by former OpenAI executives in 2021, launched a chat robot called Claude in January to compete with OpenAI's popular ChatGPT.

Before Google invested, Anthropic had raised more than $700 million. The company's biggest investor is Alameda Research, a cryptographic hedge fund owned by Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, which invested $500m in the company before it filed for bankruptcy last year.

Before Google established a partnership with Anthropic, Microsoft announced that it would invest nearly $10 billion in OpenAI. Microsoft invested $1 billion in the latter as early as 2019.

The alliance between tech giants and AI startups allows established companies such as Microsoft and Google to use the most popular and advanced AI systems. In turn, startups like Anthropic can get much-needed development capital and cloud computing resources from tech giants. In announcing the deal, Google said its cloud computing division would provide computing power and advanced AI chips that Anthropic plans to use to train and deploy its future AI products.

Anthropic's language model assistant, Claude, has not been released to the public, but the company says it plans to expand its use of chatbots in the coming months.

The deal shows that Google is very optimistic about the potential of AI, especially by extending AI beyond the company's core search business. "I am excited that we are about to launch an AI-driven leap in search and other areas," Sandal Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Alphabet, said at the company's fourth-quarter earnings meeting on Thursday.

He said Google plans to launch its own chat robot "in the coming weeks and months" and allow consumers to use such products "as search partners."

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