Google plans to invest $40bn in Anthropic

Google will invest $10 billion in Anthropic PBC, with another $30 billion potentially to follow, strengthening the relationship between two companies that are at once partners and rivals in the race to build artificial intelligence.

Anthropic said Google was committing to $10 billion now in cash at a $350 billion valuation, the same amount it was valued at in a funding round in Feb, not including the recent money raised. The Alphabet Inc-owned company will invest another $30 billion if Anthropic hits performance targets, the startup said on Friday.

Anthropic has ramped up its fundraising amid the breakout success of Claude Code, an AI agent that speeds up the process of writing computer software. The startup said earlier this week that it had nabbed another $5 billion from Amazon, also at a valuation of $350 billion, with the option to inject another $20 billion over time. Anthropic raised $30 billion in Feb and investors have since sought to back the firm at a valuation of $800 billion or more.

Anthropic is a major customer of Google’s chips and cloud services, businesses that Google is striving to grow as its main moneymaker, search advertising, matures. Google Cloud will provide 5 gigawatts worth of computing capacity to Anthropic over the next five years, and several more gigawatts could follow. The deal marks an expansion of an agreement announced earlier this month between Anthropic, Google and Broadcom Inc.

Google’s tensor processing units are one of the best alternatives to Nvidia’s chips, making them a precious resource for AI developers.