Alphabet Pours $1B into Anthropic

Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) has agreed to a new investment of more than $1 billion in generative AI startup Anthropic, according to sources. The fresh funding builds on Google’s past investments of $2 billion in Anthropic and 10% ownership stake in the startup, as well as a large cloud contract between the two companies. Anthropic is most well known for its Claude AI chatbot.The agreement comes as Anthropic, one of the key players in Silicon Valley’s artificial intelligence arms race, is in late-stage talks to raise a funding round of $2 billion at a $60-billion valuation led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. In December, Anthropic’s revenue hit an annualized $1 billion, which was an increase of roughly 10x year over year, the source said. The company’s revenue comes primarily from enterprise sales.Financial Times was first to report Google’s investment.Anthropic, which has been backed heavily by Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN), was founded by former OpenAI research executives. It launched Claude in March 2023, and like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, Claude has exploded in popularity as businesses incorporate generative AI chatbots across sales, marketing and customer service functions. Google’s parent company, Alphabet, nosed ahead five cents early Thursday to $198.42.