On Friday, Google revealed a new partnership with Anthropic, a startup established in 2021. Anthropic, which developed Claude, an AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, will benefit from Google’s support through this collaboration.
As part of the $300 million deal, Google will acquire approximately a 10% stake in Anthropic, according to the Financial Times. In exchange, Anthropic will receive significant financial backing and access to crucial cloud computing resources. This agreement could potentially value Anthropic at around $5 billion.
In contrast, ChatGPT’s creator, OpenAI, has substantial backing from Microsoft. Last month, Microsoft announced it would invest $10 billion in OpenAI, building on previous investments of $1 billion in 2019 and an additional $2 billion in 2021.
Microsoft plans to integrate OpenAI’s technology across various products, including the Bing search engine, which could challenge Google’s dominance in search.
Anthropic and OpenAI share some common origins. Anthropic was founded largely by former OpenAI members who became disillusioned with the company’s strategic and cultural changes.
A former OpenAI employee recently told Fortune that while OpenAI’s founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman publicly emphasized AI safety, “that often seemed like just a fig leaf for business concerns, while actual, legitimate A.I. safety concerns were brushed aside.”
Anthropic describes itself as “an A.I. safety and research company” and emphasizes its commitment to AI safety through its research on “Constitutional A.I.”
The company’s website explains, “We show that language models can learn to follow a set of simple, natural language principles via self-improvement, and we use this new method to train a more harmless assistant.”
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has expressed concerns about the risks associated with advanced AI. In December, he described ChatGPT as “scary good” and warned, “We are not far from dangerously strong AI.”
Musk also tweeted that his confidence in OpenAI’s safety was “not high,” noting that, despite his initial support, OpenAI “started as open-source & non-profit. Neither are still true.”
Fortune reached out to OpenAI for comment but did not receive an immediate response. Meanwhile, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has praised ChatGPT and similar AI tools, calling them “every bit as important as the PC, as the internet.”
Anthropic, which released a limited test version of Claude in January, plans to expand its reach.
“We’re partnering with Google Cloud to support the next phase of Anthropic, where we’re going to deploy our AI systems to a larger set of people,” said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a statement. “This partnership gives us the cloud infrastructure performance and scale we need.”
