[News Inside Companies] Google's 'Anthropic', Rival to 'OpenAI'

Founded by OpenAI Alumni, AI Chatbot is Claude
Has Clashed with ChatGPT Over Critical Opinions

[Asia Economy Reporter Han Seung-gon] Google, the world's largest search engine company, has invested 500 billion KRW in AI startup Anthropic to compete against the conversational AI chatbot 'ChatGPT.' The AI chatbot being developed by this startup is called 'Claude.'

On the 4th (local time), Bloomberg News reported that Google formed a partnership with Anthropic, which is developing Claude, and invested nearly 400 million USD (about 500 billion KRW). Bloomberg stated, "After Microsoft (MS) recently invested 1 billion USD in OpenAI, Google also joined hands with Anthropic."

MS announced on its blog on the 23rd of last month (local time) that it had signed a multi-year partnership worth billions of dollars with OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. This is the third partnership between MS and OpenAI following those in 2019 and 2021. Bloomberg analyzed that with generative AI emerging as a core technology to dominate the future search market, alliances between big tech companies and AI startups are actively taking place.

Anthropic, headquartered in San Francisco, California, with about 40 employees, was founded in 2021 by siblings Daniela Amodei and Dario Amodei, who were part of the founding team of OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. In January, they also released a beta version of the chatbot 'Claude,' similar to ChatGPT. Anthropic plans to expand access to the chatbot soon.

Photo by Yonhap News

According to IT media 'The Verge,' Daniela Amodei brought several researchers from OpenAI, including the lead engineer of 'GPT-3,' the previous version of ChatGPT, to Anthropic. It is known that they often clashed in values, as they did not agree with the vision presented by OpenAI, especially criticizing that ChatGPT, released at the end of last year, lacked proper safety measures.

Meanwhile, Google and Anthropic have not officially confirmed the 400 million USD investment report, but announced that they signed a separate partnership agreement for Anthropic to use Google's cloud computing services. Anthropic raised a total of 1.2 billion USD (about 1.5 trillion KRW), including 124 million USD (about 155 billion KRW) in Series A funding in 2021, increasing its corporate value to about 5 billion USD (about 6 trillion KRW).

Thomas Kurian, CEO of Google Cloud, said in a statement, "Google Cloud provides open infrastructure for next-generation AI startups. AI is creating new opportunities for growth and improved services across all industries."