There is no giant in the tech sector that has not been relying on an artificial intelligence company for some time, when it is not developing it itself.
Among the companies experiencing the greatest excitement in recent months is Google, which has developed Bard, a chatbot created on the LaMDA model, a “rival” of ChatGPT. And that in the summer months it seems he worked in secret on Gemini, a generative artificial intelligence that promises to be even five times more powerful than GPT-4.
And now, as several US media have reported in recent hours, Google invested in Anthropic. Invested or better yet reinvestedas we’ll see.
Anthropic: the startup that everyone wants to invest in, even Google and Amazon
Google investe in Anthropic
As some American media have reported, including the Wall Street Journal, Google has invested 2 billion dollars in Anthropic (artificial intelligence startup).
According to news from a few weeks ago (also reported by us), the Mountain View company had already invested 300 million dollars in the month of February. Now it seems that the initial investment was 500 million, to which over time – but the chronology of the investments is not known – another 1.5 million dollars were added.
However, the commitment to countering Microsoft, which relies on OpenAI’s artificial intelligence, is evident.
Google leaders did not want to make any statements in this sense.
Amazon’s investment
As we reported in another article, Amazon has also recently invested heavily in Anthropic.
In the case of the company led by Andy Jassy, it was an initial outlay of 1.25 billion dollars, but the overall investment will be 4 billion.
The agreement provides that Anthropic will be able to use Amazon’s cloud computing platform. And its chips, to be able to develop large language models.
No conflicts of interest
The double commitment of the startup Anthropic, both with Google and Amazon, should not be surprising.
The Italian-American Dario Amodei, one of the two founders of the company, once Amazon’s investment was made public, intervened to make it known that “nothing has changed” with respect to the agreement with Google. Amodei explained that the relationship with Amazon will not be exclusive, and that Anthropic will also continue to use Google’s cloud and chips.
Indeed, the Waal Street Journal also revealed that in recent months Google Cloud has concluded a multi-year agreement with Anthropic worth over 3 billion dollars.
What is Anthropic
Anthropic is an artificial intelligence startup founded in 2021 by two Italian-American brothers, Daniela and Dario Amodei, who had previously worked for OpenAI.
Recently valued at nearly $5 billion, the company is a major competitor to Sam Altman’s firm.
Anthropic has already developed the Claude chatbot, which like ChatGPT uses a messaging interface to allow users to converse with AI. And he is now working on Claude 2, thanks also to the important investments of big tech.
In this regard, if in the last year Anthropic received 7 billion dollars in funding, OpenAI has obtained 13, starting from 2019, from Microsoft alone. It will be a good challenge.
AI safety fund
Meanwhile, important news regarding AI has arrived in recent days.
The AI safety fund has been established, a super fund into which 10 billion dollars will immediately flow.
Is that brings together all the major players in the sector: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and Microsoft. The announcement was made on the respective websites and blogs of the companies involved.
The project is linked to the Frontier Model Forum, supported by the same companies, which deals with “ensuring the safe and responsible development of frontier AI models”.
The companies explain the reason for establishing the fund as follows: “The Forum and philanthropic partners are creating a new AI Safety Fund, which will support independent researchers from around the world affiliated with academic institutions, research institutes and startups.”
The main objective will be to “raise safety and security standards” regarding artificial intelligence.