Google has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in artificial intelligence (AI) startup Anthropic, a rival of OpenAI. The massive investment, which follows a $4 billion investment in Anthropic by Amazon just last month, is a significant bet on the future of safe and beneficial AI.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI researchers and engineers. The company has quickly become one of the leading startups focused on AI safety research and developing new AI technologies to solve real-world problems. To date, Anthropic has raised over $6 billion in funding, with the new capital from Google aimed at further accelerating its research and development efforts.
Google’s investment comes amid growing concern over the potential dangers of advanced AI systems. Recent AI chatbots like OpenAI’s ChatGPT have demonstrated the rapid pace of progress in natural language AI, while also surfacing issues around bias and misinformation.
Anthropic is focused on developing AI that is not just powerful, but also safe, beneficial, and aligned with human values. The company has developed extensive AI safety research initiatives and techniques like constitutional AI to prevent harmful AI behavior.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google’s parent company Alphabet, said “Anthropic’s mission is to ensure that AI systems are helpful, harmless, and honest. We are excited about Anthropic’s safety-focused research and the potential AI has for profound societal benefits.”
With the new funding, Anthropic plans to scale up staff, compute power, and real-world testing. The company also aims to make its AI safety protocols and technologies widely available to researchers and companies through open source tools and collaboration.
The investment from Google and Amazon represents a growing focus on AI safety as the technology matures. It is likely to shape the development of artificial intelligence for years to come by allowing companies like Anthropic to lead the way in making AI not just powerful, but also robust, secure, and aligned with human values.
