Google reportedly outlined plans to invest $2 billion into AI company Anthropic in an attempt to ramp up competition with Microsoft, which is a major backer of rival OpenAI.

A spokesperson for Anthropic told Reuters Google has made an upfront investment of $500 million and has committed to an additional $1.5 billion over time. 

Google already owns a ten per cent stake in Anthropic and has invested a total of $550 million in the company to date.

Anthropic continues to attract backing, and Google’s move comes a month after Amazon announced a strategic partnership with the AI company to take a minority stake and invest $4 billion.

Anthropic also has backing from South Korean operator SK Telecom, which in August announced equity funding worth $100 million as part of a push to encourage AI deployment in telecoms, such as multilingual chatbots for contact centres. 

Further, Anthropic was named by the global AI telecoms alliance as one of the AI companies it will work with to develop telecoms-specific models.