To win the artificial intelligence race, Google has not only developed its own technologies, but also pumped money at the prominent beginning of it. And to maintain its competitive advantage, Google has kept the ownership shares in the initial ones secret.
Court documents recently obtained from the New York Times reveal Google shares in one of those beginners, anthropics, and how its investment in the new company is decided to change.
Google owns 14 percent of the anthropic, according to the legal records that he presented as part of a Google antitrust issue. But that investment gives Google a little control over the company. The Internet giant can only own up to 15 percent of the anthropic, according to registrations, and Google has no voting rights, no board seats and no board rights at the beginning.
Still, Google is set to invest an additional $ 750 million in anthropic in September through a type of loan known as convertible debt, according to registrations. Companies agreed on convertible marking in 2023. In total, Google has invested more than $ 3 billion in the company.
Registrations offer a rare look at the investment of a large technology company of a start. Such investments have been under control by regulators, who asked if the agreements gave tasks an unfair advantage in evolutionary and powerful technology. In addition to Google, Amazon and Microsoft have also invested in the beginnings of high profile such as Anthropic and Openai, chatbot chatgpt manufacturer.
“A big company like Google knows that there is a race for him, and she has a enough pile of money that can bet on many horses,” said Chris V. Nicholson, an investor with the capital’s own venture capital firm that focuses on the technologies of him.
Anthropic records emerged in a historic Google Antitrust issue on online search. In August 2024, a federal court revealed that Google had acted as a monopoly on the search for the Internet, violating the law.
To correct the situation, the Justice Department, which brought the case against Google, had proposed that the court force Silicon Valley to sell any product to compete with the search. This could have included Google shares in Anthropic, which makes a chatbot called Claude that people could be directed to search questions.
On Friday, the Justice Department withdrew that proposal, arguing that Google should be sought to notify government officials only before making investments in it
Anthropic presented the documents viewed from the time before the Department of Justice changed the course. Records in the Public Pit contain edits. The anthropic’s legal firm sent an untouched copy of its records in Times, which has argued for greater public access to the antitrust issue.
In the uncontrolled files, Anthropic said Google should not be forced to divert his shares at first. This “would harm both anthropic and competition in general” by depressing the market value of the new company and hindering its ability to collect capital, anthropic lawyers wrote.
Tom Brown, an anthropic co -founder, added that the beginning would “suffer severe damage” if Google were forced to terminate their relationships, the documents showed.
Google refused to comment on the financial conditions of his anthropic shares. He said he has made net capital investments in a number of enterprises to make a return and increase the market. Anthropic refused to comment.
Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and his sister Daniela Amodei, who had left Opennai following disagreements on how his technologies were being funded and released through Microsoft. They created anthropic to build it with security guards and structured the company as a corporation with public benefits aimed at creating public and social goods.
(The Times has sued Openai and Microsoft, accusing them of violating the copyright of the news content with regard to the systems of he. Openi and Microsoft have denied those claims.)
Anthropic has worked to ensure that he is not owned or dominated by the only technology giant, according to court files. In total, the company has raised more than $ 14.8 billion from entrepreneurship capital firms such as Menlo Ventures and others.
In 2023, Google invested more than $ 2 billion in anthropic. That same year, Amazon invested $ 4 billion in anthropic, followed by an additional $ 4 billion last year.
Today, Google’s investment in anthropic is worth a “significant amount more” than the last round of starting funding, which was closed this month, according to court records. Funding valued anthropics at $ 61.5 billion.
Anthropik buys large amounts of computer power from Google and Amazon to build its systems and has also agreed to use cloud chips and computing services from some of the companies that invested in it. This means effectively that some of the money gathered is pumped back into its investors.