Google agreed to invest up to $2 billion in Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup founded by ex-OpenAI executives, CNBC has confirmed.
The commitment involves a $500 million upfront cash infusion and an additional $1.5 billion to be invested over time, an Anthropic spokesperson told CNBC. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier on the planned financing.
A Google spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to request for comment.
Anthropic is the developer of Claude 2, a rival chatbot to OpenAI’s ChatGPT that’s used by companies including Slack, Notion and Quora. The company was founded in 2021 and, in addition to Google, has received funding from Salesforce and Zoom and was valued earlier this year at $4.1 billion.
Claude 2 has the ability to summarize up to about 75,000 words, which could be the length of a book. Users can input large data sets and ask for summaries in the form of a memo, letter or story. ChatGPT, by contrast, can handle about 3,000 words.
Research by Arthur AI, a machine learning monitoring platform, found Claude 2 to be most reliable chatbot in terms of “self-awareness,” meaning accurately gauging what it does and doesn’t know, and answering only questions it had training data to support. Arthur AI tested chatbots from Meta, Cohere and OpenAI.
In April, Google invested $300 million in the company, taking a 10% stake. That same month, Anthropic was one of four companies invited to a meeting at the White House to discuss responsible AI development with Vice President Kamala Harris. Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and OpenAI were the others.
Anthropic quickly turned around and raised a $450 million round in May. At the time, it marked the largest funding round for an AI company since Microsoft’s investment in OpenAI in January, according to PitchBook data.
Anthropic was founded by Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s former vice president of research, and his sister, Daniela Amodei, who was OpenAI’s vice president of safety and policy. Several other OpenAI research alumni were also on Anthropic’s founding team.
Amodei told CNBC in July that Anthropic invested at least two months in developing its newest chatbot, with a team of 30 to 35 people working directly on the AI model and a total of 150 people supporting it. She said the market is growing so rapidly that there’s plenty of room for multiple players to succeed.
“It’s a really unusual time from a business perspective because there’s just so much demand for large language models and really more demand than the industry can currently provide,” Amodei said at the time. “The landscape is just very wide, and there’s really quite a lot of room for many different users and types of users to make use of these systems.”
A week-long rout in Bitcoin worsened Friday, with the digital asset hitting an over 3-month low, reversing gains that followed the election of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Bitcoin was trading at about $80,500 in early trading in Asia, down 3.45% on the day and nearly 25% lower than an all-time high hit in mid December.
Bitcoin had enjoyed a surge in prices following Trump’s victory in November, with the leader having posed himself as a pro-crypto candidate during his campaign.
However, prices have slipped as investors shun assets perceived to be risky given the weakness in global equity markets, uncertainty surrounding the new President’s tariff policy and resolutions to major wars such as Russia-Ukraine and Israel-Gaza.
Investor sentiment was also soured by news that Bybit, a major cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a $1.5 billion hack in what’s estimated to be the largest crypto heist in history.
“It seems that the market has become volatile in reaction to the Bybit incident,” Jeff Mei, chief operating officer at crypto exchange BTSE said in a statement sent to CNBC, adding that inflation concerns and a pause in Fed rate cuts in the U.S. have also suppressed markets.
Still, some crypto bulls remain positive on Bitcoin’s outlook as they await key regulatory developments from the Trump administration.
Already, Trump has signed an executive order promoting the advancement of cryptocurrencies in the U.S. and developing a national digital asset stockpile. Meanwhile, his administration has created task forces and a “crypto czar” tasked with supporting a clear regulatory framework for crypto assets.
Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday that bitcoin could surpass the $200,000 threshold this year.
Increased crypto adoption by institutions along with some “regulatory clarity” in the U.S., should lead to less volatility over time, he said.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) is interviewed by FOX and Friends at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 3, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, sent subpoenas to eight technology companies asking for more information about their communications with foreign governments over concerns that they seek to “censor speech” in the U.S.
The subpoenas were sent Wednesday to the CEOs of Google parent Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and TikTok, as well as X and video platform Rumble.
“The Committee must understand how and to what extent foreign governments have limited Americans’ access to lawful speech in the United States, as well as the extent to which the Biden-Harris Administration aided or abetted these efforts,” Jordan said in a statement.
CNBC reached out to each of the subpoenaed companies for comment. A spokesperson for Microsoft said the company is engaged with the panel and “committed to working in good faith.”
A Rumble spokesperson said it “has received the subpoena and we look forward to sharing information related to the ongoing efforts of numerous governments around the globe who seek to suppress the innate human right to self expression.”
Jordan pointed to the European Union’s Digital Services Act, a similar set of laws in the U.K., called the Online Services Act, and regulations around illegal content and hate speech in Brazil and Australia.
The committee is seeking communications around the companies’ compliance with “foreign censorship laws, regulations, judicial orders or other government-initiated efforts” and any internal correspondence discussing those matters.
The subpoenas come after the Federal Trade Commission last week launched an inquiry into “tech censorship.” FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson said in a statement that the probe will help the agency “better understand how these firms may have violated the law by silencing and intimidating Americans for speaking their minds.”
The FTC’s request for public comment defines tech platforms as companies that provide a range of services, from social media and video sharing to event planning and ride sharing.
The Republican-led committee has previously accused major tech companies of censorship. The panel subpoenaed Alphabet, Meta and other firms in 2023, demanding they turn over communications between the companies and the U.S. government over censorship concerns.
Andrew Anagnost, chief executive officer of Autodesk Inc., during a Bloomberg Television interview in London, UK, on April 25, 2023.
Chris Ratcliffe | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Design software maker Autodesk said Thursday that it will lay off 1,350 employees, which works out to 9% of its workforce.
The job cuts follow a series of large headcount reductions across the tech industry.
In January, Meta said it would let go of 5% of its workers, and earlier this month Workday, which sells human resources and finance software, announced an 8.5% decrease. Google this week also announced cuts to its human relations and cloud divisions, CNBC reported, and PC maker HP said in a Thursday regulatory filing that it would reduce its headcount by 1,000 or 2,000, representing under 4% of total headcount.
“Our GTM model has evolved significantly from the transition to subscription and multi-year contracts billed annually to self-service enablement, the adoption of direct billing, and more,” Autodesk CEO Andrew Anagnost wrote in a memo to employees. “These changes position us to better meet the evolving needs of our customers and channel partners. To fully benefit from these changes, we are beginning the transformation of our GTM organization to increase customer satisfaction and Autodesk’s productivity.”
The company is also conducting the layoffs to stay competitive in the current economy and protect the company’s leadership in cloud computing and artificial intelligence, Anagnost wrote.
San Francisco-based Autodesk will make facility reductions as well. But it will not close any offices, a spokesperson told CNBC in an email. It expects $135 million to $150 million in restructuring costs before taxes.
The company on Thursday also announced better-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter results. The company delivered $2.29 in adjusted earnings per share on $1.64 billion in revenue, which was up 12% year over year. Analysts surveyed by LSEG had been looking for $2.14 per share and $1.63 billion in revenue.
For the fiscal first quarter, Autodesk called for $2.14 to $2.17 in adjusted earnings per share on $1.600 billion to $1.610 billion in revenue. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $2.08 per share and $1.598 billion in revenue.
Management sees $9.34 to $9.67 in adjusted earnings per share for the 2026 fiscal year, with $6.895 billion to $6.965 billion in revenue. The LSEG consensus was $9.24 per share and $6.902 billion in revenue.