What Anthropic and Stargate Have in Common

The term “bottomless pit of need” usually refers to an insecure person, but it could also apply to artificial intelligence startups, with their insatiable appetite for cash. Take Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s biggest rivals, which the Financial Times reported on Wednesday was raising $1 billion from Google. Just two weeks ago, we reported Anthropic was raising $2 billion from venture investors, and in November Amazon pumped $4 billion into the company.

Including Google’s latest billion and the venture funding round underway, Anthropic appears to have raised $14 billion since the fall of 2023, including $6 billion previously invested by Amazon and Google. The firm isn’t throwing cash out the window: Developing new AI models is horrendously expensive, reflecting the intense amount of computing involved and the cost of the specialized AI chips needed to handle those chores.