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Google has agreed to invest up to $2 billion in artificial intelligence startup Anthropic, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter.

The company has invested $500 million upfront into the OpenAI rival and agreed to add $1.5 billion more over time, the report said.

It's not clear to me whether this is truly a 10-figure investment during 2023 -- @BTE could you discuss your reasoning here?

@jcb They already invested $700B this year in Anthropocene before this.

@jcb And honestly it doesn’t matter. They committed $2b in 2023. I don’t care when they send it over and we probably won’t ever find out.

it seems like "what quarter the investment actually happens" should be knowable eventually since Google is public.

I can't find a reference for $700M earlier this year. I'm seeing $300M in late 2022 and a $450 total round in May that Google participated in?

But I guess committed to funding is a fine interpretation of "make an investment"

GPT-4 says there have only been 7 of these (rounding up YT because inflation).

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As an AI model, I don't have real-time or up-to-the-minute data access and my training only includes data up until September 2021. However, I can give you some of the significant investments made by Alphabet (Google's parent company) up until that time, but please note I won't be able to provide you with the inflation-adjusted figures in 2023 dollars. Also, the specific financial details of many deals are not publicly disclosed.

Here are some of Alphabet's major investments and acquisitions:

1. Motorola Mobility (2012): Google bought Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion in one of its largest acquisitions. However, Google later sold off parts of Motorola but kept a significant portion of the patents.

2. Nest Labs (2014): Google acquired Nest Labs, the maker of smart home products, for around $3.2 billion.

3. DoubleClick (2007): Google acquired online advertising company DoubleClick for approximately $3.1 billion.

4. YouTube (2006): Google purchased video-sharing platform YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

5. Waze (2013): Google acquired the GPS navigation software Waze for approximately $966 million.

6. Looker (2019): Google announced it would acquire business intelligence platform Looker for $2.6 billion to bolster its Google Cloud offerings. The deal closed in 2020.

7. Fitbit (2019): Google announced it had agreed to purchase Fitbit, a producer of fitness tracking devices, for approximately $2.1 billion. The deal was completed in 2021.

8. Apigee (2016): Google purchased API management company Apigee for around $625 million.

9. DeepMind (2014): Google acquired British AI company DeepMind for an estimated $500 million.

10. CloudSimple (2019): Google purchased cloud company CloudSimple to further support the migration of VMware workloads from on-premises data centers to the cloud. Financial details were not disclosed but considering the strategic importance, it could be among significant investments.

Please refer to recent data sources for the most up-to-date and accurate information.

@MatthewRitter and, as it tends to be, is wrong, Wikipedia lists 34 acquisitions over 100M, and that's just the ones with a public price, up to you how you define "startup" though, you posted a list with Motorola on it though so it cannot be that strict.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Alphabet

There should be a strong social norm against posting correct sounding nonsense from LLMs as fact.

@CodeandSolder Well, $100mm is only 9 digits and this question is about 10 digit deals, so technically ChatGPT beat you on this one!!

@CodeandSolder It shouldn’t have counted Waze though since it was <$1B so there are really only 6.

@BTE my bad on that, in that case Wikipedia lists 9 acquisitions total, adding Raxium and Mandiant in 2022.

In my opinion the ones one could reasonably call a startup are: Raxium, YouTube, Looker, Nest.

@CodeandSolder These are all acquisitions though, correct? This question does not require an acquisition. Anthropic has already raised more than half a billion this year and I would be surprised if they don’t get close to $2B by the time the year is over. Google could make up half of that considering Microsoft made an 11 figure investment in OpenAI.

@BTE yeah, of course, I was just correcting the incorrect information in the comment.

There does not seem to be a good list of investments by value not behind a paywall.

It would probably benefit the question to clarify if acquisitions are counted and what qualifies as a startup.

Also, mm creates a collision of units (even though nearly never significant), I get that M collides with the industry term for thousands, how about MM as a compromise?

@BTE also, how is the value counted, for example this is widely reported as a 1B investment but is structured as 700M direct investment and 300M in some agreement: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/google-invests-1b-indias-bharti-airtel

@CodeandSolder That one wouldn't count because only the $700mm was equity. I guess it is now occurring to me that Verily and Waymo could plausibly resolve this market if they disclosed large, new investments. What do you think of that?

@BTE I probably wouldn't count transferring money to a company they own >90% of as an "investment in a startup" but that's why I said that part of the question could use clarification.

@CodeandSolder Yes I agree the mm can get confusing, that is why I always add the $, but even then it isn't always in dollars so yes I can agree to try to adhere to MM.