Google to invest up to $40bn in Anthropic

In short: Google plans to invest up to $40bn in Anthropic, starting with $10bn now and more later if Anthropic hits certain goals.

What happened

Google has reached a deal to invest up to $40bn in Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI models. Google said $10bn of that will be invested upfront, at Anthropic’s current valuation.

Anthropic said the remaining $30bn could arrive later, but only if the company meets performance milestones. Anthropic did not share what those milestones are.

Google already had a close business relationship with Anthropic. The companies work together on Google Cloud, which is Google’s service for renting computing power over the internet, and on TPU chips, which are Google-made computer chips designed for AI work.

The Financial Times reported that Google and Anthropic also have a plan to bring 5 gigawatts of data center capacity online starting next year. Data centers are large buildings full of computers, like warehouses of servers, that run online services.

Why it matters

AI systems need huge amounts of computing power, both to train them and to run them for users. You can think of it like a very busy call center, if more people call in, you need more staff and more phone lines. Anthropic has been growing quickly, and the funding is meant to help it pay for the extra computing power it needs as products like Claude Code gain users.

Source: Financial Times