Google Invests In ChatGPT Rival Despite Controversial Link To FTX's Sam Bankman-Fried

Search engine giant Google reportedly invested nearly $400 million in ChapGPT rival Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) safety and research company, which became controversial late last year because of the funding it received from the embattled FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried.

Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian confirmed over the weekend that the search engine giant's cloud computing services invested in the AI startup firm Anthropic without disclosing the invested amount.

"Today's announcement with @AnthropicAI is another great example of the ecosystem of AI startups leveraging Google Cloud's reliable and open infrastructure to build their businesses," Kurian said in a tweet.

"AI has evolved from academic research to become one of the biggest drivers of technological change, creating new opportunities for growth and improved services across all industries," Kurian said in the announcement.

Anthropic confirmed the partnership in an announcement but it did not reveal the amount of investment it received from the search engine giant.

"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 announced, noting that "this partnership gives us the cloud infrastructure performance and scale we need."

Financial Times reported that Google has invested $300 million in the AI start-up while Bloomberg, citing a person familiar with the deal, shared that the investment was "almost $400 million."

The new deal between Anthropic and Google gives the latter a stake in the AI start-up, but according to Bloomberg, it does not require Anthropic to spend the funds to buy cloud services from Google.

Anthropic, in the announcement, also confirmed that it previously raised capital from Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, the former CEO of the now-bankrupt crypto hedge fund Alameda Research.

"The Series B round was led by Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of FTX. The round also included participation from Caroline Ellison, Jim McClave, Nishad Singh, Jaan Tallinn, and the Center for Emerging Risk Research (CERR)," Anthropic shared.

The fundraising effort led by Bankman-Fried in April 2021 raised around $580 million, $530 million of which reportedly came from the FTX founder and his business partners, The New York Times reported, which some critics doubted and claimed that the figure could be even higher than the one disclosed to the public.

As for the newly-formed partnership, Anthropic CEO said, "We are eager to use the Google Cloud infrastructure to build reliable, interpretable, and steerable AI systems. This partnership with Google Cloud will let us build a more robust AI platform."

Meanwhile, Bankman-Fried is currently under house arrest at his parents' home in California after pleading not guilty to multiple charges, including wire fraud, securities fraud, conspiracy, money laundering, campaign finance violations and defrauding investors for $1.8 billion.