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Google has made a new investment of more than $1bn in OpenAI rival Anthropic, boosting its position in the startup as Silicon Valley titans rush to build cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.

The Alphabet-owned search behemoth has already committed about $2bn to Anthropic and is now increasing its stake in the group, according to four people with knowledge of the situation.

Anthropic, best known for the Claude family of AI models, is one of the main start-ups in the new wave of generative AI companies building tools to generate text, images and code in response to user prompts.

Google invented the technology on which models such as Claude and OpenAI’s GPT4 are built, but it is lagging behind in the race to commercialize powerful technology. Anthropic’s investment is part of the Silicon Valley company’s efforts to diversify its AI business and take on deep-pocketed competitors, including Microsoft, Meta and Amazon.

Anthropic is also on the verge of securing an additional $2bn from Silicon Valley venture capital investors, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, in a separate deal expected to triple the startup’s valuation to about $60bn, according to several people with direct knowledge of the deal.

The startup is in fierce competition with rivals OpenAI and Elon Musk’s xAI, both of which raised more than $10bn last year, as well as Facebook parent Meta and Microsoft.

The new tranche of money from Google to Anthropic adds to a total investment of $8bn from Amazon, the ecommerce giant’s largest venture investment, announced in the last 18 months. Amazon is also working on embed Claude’s models to the next generation version of its Alexa speaker.

The close relationship between AI start-ups and their Big Tech backers was investigated by the Federal Trade Commission during the Joe Biden administration.

Under outgoing commissioner Lina Khan, the FTC is targeting investments from Google and Amazon in Anthropic and Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI, examining the deals’ impact on competition in the new sector. But with Khan stepping down in the coming weeks, dealmakers are growing more confident in their ability to forge tie-ups.

Anthropic’s revenue hit annual $1bn in December, up nearly 10 times from a year earlier, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s finances.

However, investors do not expect Anthropic or its rivals to be profitable in the near future, due to the high cost of developing leading AI models. With new breakthroughs, they believe the technology will eventually make trillions of dollars worth.

“Today I am more confident than at any previous time that we are very close to powerful capabilities . . . AI systems are better than almost all humans at almost all tasks,” said Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei in an interview with CNBC on Tuesday.

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by a group of former OpenAI employees, seeks to distinguish itself from its rivals by focusing on AI safety. It has fired several employees from OpenAI in recent months, including one of the company’s co-founders.

The group is also the first to release some features, such as its AI ability to control computers, and has focused this year, along with rivals, on creating AI agents – software that can complete task and navigate the web for human users.

Google and Anthropic declined to comment.