Google spending $2B more on Anthropic.

Anthropic is the do-godder Witcher of AI and everyone is tossing (coins) billions at it. Amazon tossed $1.5B some weeks back (with a promise of going up to $4B in future) and became its preferred cloud partner. Google was feeling left behind (after being Anthropic’s early supporter) and now they are also shelling more quids. Some $2B worth of ‘em.

What’s going on here?

Google is reportedly investing $2B in Anthropic.

What does this mean?

According to the Wall Street Journal, Google has invested $500M of these $2B upfront with the rest of the $1.5B over time. I want to know who has the bigger stake in Anthropic now: Google or Amazon. My guess is that Google invested just enough to keep that majority stake.

In total, Anthropic has already got $2B in the past few weeks with $4B more on the horizon. They are sitting on a huge cash pile which, if I’m to guess, is going into the training of their next model.

Why should I care?

Google’s investment seems weird, again. Google has its flagship model Gemini coming out soon. Much of this investment feels like Google hedging their bets.

Remember the pitch deck from Anthropic that leaked earlier this year? Their claim was that in the upcoming 2-3 years, the leading model providers will be so far ahead that it’ll be impossible to catch them. Obviously, OpenAI is one of those leading providers. With all this cash, Anthropic wants to be another one itself.