Google will invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic and provide AI capacity

Google is investing $10 billion in Anthropic right now and will invest another $30 billion if the AI startup reaches certain targets, Bloomberg reports .

In addition, as part of the deal, Google Cloud will provide Anthropic with 5 gigawatts of computing power over the next five years, the agency writes, thus the companies are expanding an agreement involving Broadcom announced in early April.

There have already been concerns in the market about so-called "round-robin deals" between large computing power providers and AI startups such as Anthropic and OpenAI, Bloomberg notes. Hyperscalers simultaneously invest in startups and sell them their chips or data center capacity.

Shares of Google's parent company Alphabet rose 1.6% in trading on April 24.

Anthropic is ramping up its capital raising amid the breakthrough success of Claude Code, an AI agent that speeds up the process of writing software, Bloomberg explains. It has quickly become a staple tool for engineers in Silicon Valley, including some Google employees. Anthropic's Cowork agent, which doesn't require programming skills and can perform a wider range of tasks, is also rapidly gaining popularity, the company says. Google executives in recent months have expressed concern about their position in this market, current and former employees told the agency.

At the same time, Anthropic is a major customer of the tech giant's cloud services and its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), which represent one of the best alternatives to Nvidia chips, Bloomberg writes. The AI startup needs additional infrastructure to cope with the growing demand for its products.

Google will invest the money at Anthropic's valuation of $350 billion - the same valuation it set in its February funding round, excluding recently raised funds, Bloomberg notes. Earlier this week, the startup said it received $5 billion from Amazon - also at a $350 billion valuation.

In mid-April, the agency reported that Anthropic had received several offers from investors for a new round that could value it at around $800 billion or higher - but sources say the company has so far rejected these initiatives. And on the OTC marketplace Forge Global, the startup's value has already reached the $1 trillion mark, surpassing its main competitor OpenAI.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor