Alphabet Inc.’s Google is backing artificial intelligence developer Anthropic with a further $1 billion, building its stake in one of the most promising rivals to OpenAI.

Google is reportedly investing more than $1bn in into Anthropic, taking the company's total investment in the start-up to $3bn.

The new tranche of money from Google into Anthropic adds to a total investment of $8 billion from Amazon, the ecommerce group’s largest-ever venture investment, announced over the past 18 months. Amazon is also working to embed the Claude models into the next-generation version of its Alexa speaker.

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,