Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1bn into OpenAI rival Anthropic, boosting its position in the start-up as Silicon Valley titans rush to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems. The Alphabet-owned search behemoth had already committed about $2bn to Anthropic and was now increasing its stake in the group, according to four people with knowledge of the situation. Anthropic, best known for its Claude family of AI models, is one of the leading start-ups in the new wave of generative AI companies building tools to generate text, images and code in response to user prompts. Google invented the technology on which models such as Claude and OpenAI’s GPT4 are built, but it has lagged behind in the race to commercialise the powerful technology. The Anthropic investment is part of the Silicon Valley company’s efforts to diversify its AI business and take on deep-pocketed competitors, including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon. Anthropic was also on the cusp of securing a further $2bn from Silicon Valley venture capital investors, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, in a separate deal expected to triple the start-up’s valuation to about $60bn, according to several people with direct knowledge of the deal.

Full report : Google is investing $1 billion more in Anthropic, which is also nearing a further $2 billion round from Silicon Valley VCs led by Lightspeed at a ~$60 billion valuation.