The News: Google becomes the latest tech giant trying to claim a place in the booming field of “generative AI” with a $300 million investment in artificial intelligence (AI) start-up Anthropic. Read more from Financial Times.
Google Invests $300mn in Artificial Intelligence Start-Up Anthropic, Taking on ChatGPT
Analyst Take: It is no surprise that Google is the latest tech giant looking to join the booming field of “generative AI.” Companies working on AI need access to cloud computing platforms to handle the giant AI models developed by groups such as Anthropic. With the $300 million deal, Google will take roughly a 10% stake in the startup. Anthropic for its part gets both a financial boost and cloud computing resources it needs. According to the New York Times, the Google deal could give Anthropic a valuation of roughly $5 billion.
Anthropic was formed in 2021 when a group of researchers led by Dario Amodei left OpenAI after a disagreement over the company’s direction. They were concerned that Microsoft’s first investment in OpenAI would set it on a more commercial path and detract from its original focus on the safety of advanced AI. Anthropic describes itself as an AI safety and research company that’s working to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems.
“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,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in a statement. “This partnership gives us the cloud infrastructure performance and scale we need.”
He added, “We are eager to use the Google Cloud infrastructure to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable A.I. systems.”
OpenAI’s chatbot ChatGPT has swiftly taken over the generative AI conversation. Employees in industries ranging from marketing to education are taking advantage of the AI bot. ChatGPT can auto-generate essays, poetry, and even entire movie scripts, and amassed 100 million users just two months after it launched.
It is important to note OpenAI’s technology was only trained on data up to the end of 2021, which means it has no understanding of 2022 or 2023 so far. There are also no links to sources or references to check if the information is accurate.
Under intense pressure to compete with ChatGPT, Google announced that it’s releasing its own “experimental conversational AI” tool, called “Bard.” Google is only releasing its AI conversational technology to “trusted partners,” which it declined to name initially, but Google plans to give the public access to Bard “in the coming weeks.” So for now, the public can use Google’s conversational AI tech in its new search features that “distill complex information and multiple perspectives into easy-to-digest formats,” according to Google.
Wrapping up, these are exciting times in the “generative AI” space. With Microsoft’s investment of $10 billion in ChatGPT maker OpenAI, which is now rumored to eventually power Microsoft’s search engine Bing, it is no surprise that Google would follow suit. I will be interested to see if Bard will generate the same buzz that ChatGPT has in such a short time.
Disclosure: Futurum Research is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of Futurum Research as a whole.
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Shelly Kramer is a Principal Analyst and Founding Partner at Futurum Research. A serial entrepreneur with a technology centric focus, she has worked alongside some of the world’s largest brands to embrace disruption and spur innovation, understand and address the realities of the connected customer, and help navigate the process of digital transformation. She brings 20 years' experience as a brand strategist to her work at Futurum, and has deep experience helping global companies with marketing challenges, GTM strategies, messaging development, and driving strategy and digital transformation for B2B brands across multiple verticals. Shelly's coverage areas include Collaboration/CX/SaaS, platforms, ESG, and Cybersecurity, as well as topics and trends related to the Future of Work, the transformation of the workplace and how people and technology are driving that transformation. A transplanted New Yorker, she has learned to love life in the Midwest, and has firsthand experience that some of the most innovative minds and most successful companies in the world also happen to live in “flyover country.”
