Google invests $300M in AI firm previously funded by Sam Bankman-Fried

cointelegraph.com:

Google Cloud has reportedly invested $300 million into artificial intelligence (AI) startup firm Anthropic, which also happened to receive over $500 million in funds from former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried about six months before FTX catastrophically collapsed.

While the $300 million figure was reported by Financial Times on Feb. 4, Anthropic confirmed the investment partnership with Google Cloud on the same day despite not disclosing any figures:

We're excited to use Google Cloud to train our AI systems, including Claude! https://t.co/IaqQ5lpJrP https://t.co/vOn5Cj4sPt

In the same announcement, Anthropic also confirmed that they previously raised capital from Bankman-Fried and former Alameda Research CEO Caroline Ellison, among others, in its Series B fundraising round:

The fundraising efforts led by Bankman-Fried took place in April, 2022, according to Crunchbase.

A recent post by The New York Times reported that of the $580 million raised, abou$530 million came from Bankman-Fried and his former business partners.

But some believe the figure to be even higher too.

One FTX creditor believes Bankman-Fried’s stake in the AI company could be as high as $1.1 billion. However, the creditor didn't elaborate on the figure.

Other members of the Crypto Twitter community are also speculating whether Bankman-Fried’s stake will be used to pay off the massive pile of debt that FTX has accumulated from their recent controversies. 

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As for the partnership, Anthropic will now utilize Google Cloud’s GPU and TPU clusters to train, expand, and implement its AI chatbox, called “Claude” — similar to that of ChatGTP.

Google Cloud received about a 10% stake in Anthropic, according to