An artificial intelligence company called Anthropic purportedly acquired more than $500 million from former CEO of FTX Sam Bankman-Fried roughly six months before receiving an investment of $300 million from Google, which was made through the company's Cloud business.
Details of the Investment
On February 4th, Anthropic acknowledged (1) Google's investment relationship but did not disclose the amount that Google would contribute. The AI company alluded to Google as its "preferred cloud provider" in the statement that they made, and they also added:
"To enable the next phase of Anthropic, we have formed a partnership with Google Cloud when we deploy our AI systems to a bigger group of individuals. Because of this cooperation, we now have access to the cloud infrastructure with the required performance and scalability.
According to Anthropic's explanation, a further benefit of the cooperation would be the ability for both firms to collaborate on the development of artificial intelligence computer systems, with the company getting access to the "most advanced" resources from Google.
Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic, also offered his explanation in response to the recent events.
"We are excited to leverage the infrastructure provided by Google Cloud to develop AI systems that are trustworthy, interpretable, and steerable. Because we collaborated with Google Cloud, we will be able to create a more powerful AI platform."
Anthropic intends to create and deploy an artificial intelligence assistant called Claude to create "safe, steerable AI." The company has previously developed safety procedures such as Constitutional AI, which produces artificial intelligence technologies that are more trustworthy and simpler to comprehend.
Following the completion of the investment deal, the Financial Times reports that Google Cloud was granted a 10% ownership position in Anthropic.
Investment in Charity by the SBF
Additional confirmation of the SBF capital increase in Anthropic's Series B funding round was included in the same release. The business stated that Sam Bankman-Fried, the CEO of FTX, was the one who led the Series B round of funding.
In all, Anthropic was successful in raising $580 million at the Series B fundraising event that took place in April 2022. Of this amount, SBF and his old business companions contributed $530 million.
The artificial intelligence firm located in California intends to use these funds to construct large-scale experimental infrastructure.
However, following the catastrophic failure of FTX in November of last year, it is now unknown if SBF and the defunct exchange would be able to retrieve the amount of money that was invested to pay off creditors.
According to certain media publications, the $530 million that SBF reportedly invested in Anthropic is significantly understated. In addition, an FTX creditor believes that the former CEO's interest in the AI business in California is worth more than one billion dollars.
Meanwhile, some Twitter crypto industry observers wonder whether or not SBF's extensive holding will be used to pay off creditors. Following the unexpected failure of the crypto exchange, a dedicated team is working to reduce the enormous amount of debt the company is currently carrying.
During this time, FTX's new managers continue searching for new funding sources while SBF is arrested at his parent's residence in California. The deposed CEO entered a not guilty plea on January 3rd to the eight counts of charges brought against him, comprising wire fraud and the abuse of consumers' cash.
