A ChatGPT challenger now has Google money behind it.
On Friday, Google announced a partnership with Anthropic, a startup founded in 2021. Anthropic makes Claude, which like ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence chatbot.
With the $300 million deal, Google will take a roughly 10% stake in the startup, according to the Financial Times. Anthropic for its part gets both a financial boost and cloud computing resources it needs. The deal could give Anthropic a valuation of roughly $5 billion, the New York Times reported.
Of course, ChatGPT maker OpenAI has Microsoft money behind it—lots of it. In a deal revealed last month, Microsoft will invest $10 billion in the startup. It also invested $1 billion in 2019, then quietly added another $2 billion in 2021. The software giant plans to incorporate OpenAI technology into a wide variety of products, including the Bing search engine, possibly disrupting Google’s search dominance.
The two startups share some DNA. Anthropic was formed mostly from a group that broke away from OpenAI after growing disillusioned with strategic and cultural shifts. One former OpenAI employee recently told Fortune that while OpenAI founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman paid lip service to A.I. safety, “that often seemed like just a fig leaf for business concerns, while actual, legitimate A.I. safety concerns were brushed aside.”
Anthropic says it’s focused on A.I. safety—it calls itself “an A.I. safety and research company”—and points to its research on “Constitutional A.I.”

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