Google is preparing a massive investment in Anthropic, the company behind Claude, despite its own Gemini model competing with the AI company.
Bloomberg reports that Google is investing $10 billion in Anthropic now, with another $30 billion if certain “performance targets” are hit. The investment will support a “significant expansion” to Anthropic’s computing capacity.
Anthropic said that Google is committing to invest $10 billion now in cash at a $350 billion valuation, the same amount it was valued at in a funding round in February, not including the recent money raised. The Alphabet Inc.-owned company will invest another $30 billion if Anthropic hits performance targets, the startup said Friday, and support a significant expansion of Anthropic’s computing capacity.
The initial $10 billion investment is at a a $350 billion valuation, with another recent investment including $5 billion from Amazon.
Anthropic is already a major customer for Google’s cloud services, with a recent deal seeing Google powering future Claude services as new capacity comes online. Google is also one of the few companies with access to Anthropic’s Mythos model, which is considered too dangerous for wide release at this point.
Meanwhile, Google’s own AI model goals are caught up in a race to keep up with Claude. Just this week, another Bloomberg report revealed that Google is concerned about its lower position in the market for AI coding, which Anthropic currently dominates. While Google has put effort into “vibe coding,” Claude has become the go-to option for this particular AI use case.
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