In late 2020, several top executives and innovators at OpenAI—owner of ChatGPT—left the artificial intelligence startup to create their own AI startup: Anthropic.
As Microsoft pours billions into OpenAI and ChatGPT, Google is now investing a whopping $300 million into Anthropic, while at the same time, Google Cloud has formed a new partnership with the startup.
The race to become the dominant cloud leader in AI is on—pitting two of the most powerful tech companies in the world against each other: Google vs. Microsoft.
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Google is taking a roughly 10 percent stake in AI safety and research specialist Anthropic in a $300 million move, according to multiple reports, while Microsoft is reportedly investing $10 billion into OpenAI.ADVERTISEMENT
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Anthropic just debuted its artificial intelligence language model assistant named Claude, while OpenAI has been grabbing headlines even since the launch of its AI chatbot ChatGPT in late 2022. Both startups are leveraging their much larger partners enormous cloud computing resources.
“There is no doubt, extreme competition is happening right now in front of us between Google and Microsoft around AI,” said one CEO from a solution provider that partners with both Google Cloud and Microsoft, who declined to be identified. “It’s going to change the AI landscape. It’s going to change how we as partners use AI in Google and Microsoft products for our customers. … You look at the money and investment both are making right now in these startups, it’s going to be an interesting race for sure.”
Google Cloud Partners With Anthropic; Thomas Kurian Weighs In
Google Cloud, the search giant’s fast-growing cloud organization, formed a new partnership this month with Anthropic.
“We’re thrilled to be able to partner with Google Cloud on training and deploying useful AI systems,” said Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a statement. “We’ve been impressed with Google Cloud’s open and flexible infrastructure. We are excited to partner with Google to scale-up our systems in the coming months.”
Anthropic picked Google Cloud over other cloud competitors like Microsoft Azure and AWS to benefit from Google’s deep expertise in large-scale systems for machine learning, and as a partner with shared values around safe and beneficial development of AI, according to the company.
Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said 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.
“Google Cloud is providing open infrastructure for the next generation of AI startups, and our partnership with Anthropic is a great example of how we‘re helping users and businesses tap into the power of reliable and responsible AI,” said Kurian in a statement last week.https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?dnt=false&embedId=twitter-widget-0&features=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&frame=false&hideCard=false&hideThread=false&id=1621564482643456000&lang=en&origin=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.crn.com%2Fnews%2Fcloud%2Fmicrosoft-and-openai-s-chatgpt-vs-google-and-anthropic-claude&sessionId=0a445a546832fd6743e4b9c6a62ca9abfc129c12&siteScreenName=CRN&theme=light&widgetsVersion=aaf4084522e3a%3A1674595607486&width=550px
OpenAI Leaders Leave To Form Anthropic
Anthropic CEO Amodei left OpenAI in late 2020 as vice president of research. At the time, he was leading OpenAI’s efforts to build GPT-2 and GPT-3. OpenAI’s Policy Director Jack Clark left the company in 2020 to co-found Anthropic.
In January 2021, these leaders and others former OpenAI leaders found Anthropic—backed by the team behind AI breakthroughs such as GPT-3 and Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback (RLHF).
Additional OpenAI employees who left the company to join Anthropic include Tom Brown, OpenAI’s former GPT-3 engineering leader; as well as OpenAI’s former vice president of safety and policy, Daniela Amodei, who is now President of Anthropic.
The company has already published 14 research papers showing how to build language models that are reliable and controllable.
Google’s Plan For Anthropic; Microsoft’s Plan For OpenAI
In 2023, Anthropic began deploying its technology publicly, starting off with a language model assistant named Claude. Anthropic is working with a broad range of partners on deploying Claude and will be expanding access to the assistant in the coming months, according to the company.
Anthropic said Claude runs on Google Cloud as will other systems the company develops.
Google Cloud intends to build large-scale, next-generation TPU and GPU clusters that Anthropic will use to train and deploy its AI systems.
On the Microsoft and OpenAI side, the software giant initially invested $1 billion into the startup in 2019. Microsoft then added another $2 billion in investment in 2021.
Numerous outlets reported last month that Microsoft has plans to invest another $10 billion into OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said AI is the future of the company.
“AI is just going to be a core part of a workload in Azure versus just AI alone,” said Nadella during the company’s recent quarterly financial earnings call last month. “I think every app is going to be an AI app.”
Microsoft said its partnership with OpenAI aims to democratize AI and make it accessible to everyone.
Microsoft will put more resources into creating and using specialized supercomputers to speed up OpenAI’s research. Microsoft Azure will power all of OpenAI’s workloads as the company’s only cloud provider.LEARN MORE: AI | Machine Learning | Cloud Platforms
Mark Haranas is an assistant news editor and longtime journalist now covering cloud, multicloud, software, SaaS and channel partners at CRN. He speaks with world-renown CEOs and IT experts as well as covering breaking news and live events while also managing several CRN reporters. He can be reached at [email protected].
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