Jan 22 (Reuters) - Google is making a fresh

investment of more than $1 billion into AI startup Anthropic,

the Financial Times reported on Wednesday.

This comes after Reuters and other media reported earlier in

January that Anthropic was nearing a $2 billion fundraise in a

round, led by Lightspeed Venture Partners, valuing the firm at

about $60 billion.

The FT said that Google's new investment was separate from

the Lightspeed funding round.

Anthropic, a major competitor of OpenAI in the AI foundation

model space, declined to comment. Google did not immediately

respond to a request for comment outside regular business hours.

Google already has an existing commitment of $2 billion in

Anthropic, while e-commerce giant Amazon ( AMZN ) doubled its

stake in the AI company to $8 billion late last year.

Anthropic, whose annualized revenue hit about $875 million,

sells access to its models directly and through third-party

cloud services including Amazon Web Services. The development of

large language models requires expensive computing as well as

top talent.

Microsoft ( MSFT )-backed OpenAI triggered an AI arms race

after it launched ChatGPT in November 2022. The growing

popularity of the company and new product launches helped it

close a $6.6 billion funding round in October, potentially

taking its valuation to $157 billion.