Report: Google plans to increase investment in Anthropic, which may be valued at over $350 billion

Google is in talks for an additional investment in Anthropic, which could push its valuation to over $350 billion and further solidify its competitive position with OpenAI, which is supported by Microsoft. Anthropic seeks high valuations with aggressive financial forecasts, expecting revenue of $70 billion in 2028 and attempting to challenge OpenAI’s scale advantage with higher capital efficiency. Its programming assistant Claude Code’s annualized revenue has approached $10 billion.

In the fierce competition in the field of artificial intelligence, tech giants are accelerating their stance, and Google seems ready to double its bet again. According to informed sources, Google is in early negotiations to increase its investment in AI startup Anthropic, a potential deal that could push its valuation above $350 billion, further intensifying its competition with Microsoft backed OpenAI.

According to media reports, this potential new investment is still under negotiation and its form is uncertain. Possible options include Google’s strategic investment in providing more cloud computing services to Anthropic, convertible notes, or a pricing financing round early next year.

This round of negotiations highlights the increasingly clear division of camps in the AI field. Amazon and Google have become key supporters of Anthropic, while Microsoft and Nvidia have invested billions of dollars in its main competitor OpenAI. If Google confirms this round of investment, it will further consolidate its core position in the Anthropic camp and send a clear signal to the market: it is determined to occupy a favorable position in this technology competition that defines the future.

Prior to this, Google had invested over $3 billion in Anthropic and held approximately 14% of the shares. Anthropic raised $13 billion in a funding round in September this year, with a valuation of $138 billion at the time. The newly announced valuation target means that Anthropic’s market value expectation has more than doubled in less than six months.

AI giants take sides, cloud computing becomes a key battlefield

Google’s intention to increase investment this time is closely related to its strategic layout in the field of cloud computing. In October of this year, Google announced a cloud computing agreement worth billions of dollars with Anthropic, allowing the latter to use up to one million Google self-developed TPU chips. This transaction not only provides powerful computing power support for Anthropic, but also locks in key AI customers for Google Cloud.

However, Anthropic’s partnership is not exclusive. Amazon has also invested $14 billion in Anthropic, which also uses AWS’s custom chip (Trainium2) to build and deploy its AI models. Anthropic stated last month that it remains committed to collaborating with our primary training partners and cloud service provider Amazon. This strategic layout model between multiple cloud platforms reflects the flexibility and complexity of leading AI companies in acquiring massive computing power resources.

Anthropic’s Financial Path: High Growth Expectations and Capital Efficiency

Anthropic has recently significantly raised its revenue forecast, expecting it to reach $70 billion by 2028, an increase of over 182 times compared to last year. Based on this growth trajectory, its target valuation may reach 300-400 billion US dollars.

Compared to OpenAI, Anthropic has a greater advantage in capital efficiency. Despite OpenAI’s projected revenue of $13 billion this year, its cash burn is expected to be more than three times that of Anthropic. By 2027, OpenAI is expected to consume $35 billion in cash, while Anthropic is expected to achieve $3 billion in free cash flow and generate up to $17 billion in cash by 2028, indicating that its enterprise customer-oriented model may bring higher efficiency.

The company focuses on enterprise API sales and is expected to contribute over 80% of revenue by 2028. Its programming assistant Claude Code’s annualized revenue has approached $1 billion, driving the company’s overall annualized revenue to nearly $7 billion last month.