The Detonation · Money & talent
ChatGPT turned a research field into a corporate arms race
Within four years, the two leading independent labs were each tethered to a cloud giant by billions. Anthropic spun out of OpenAI in late 2020 over how fast to push; by 2023 both were taking checks measured in billions, and Google's panic was rewiring Google itself.
Independent lab
Microsoft → OpenAI
Google / Amazon → Anthropic
Google internal event
OpenAIfounded 2015 · capped-profit 2019
~$10B*
Microsoft · Jan 2023
↳ Dec 2020 — 7 senior researchers leave to found Anthropic
Anthropicpublic-benefit corp · founded 2021
$124M
Series A · Tallinn · 2021
$580M
Series B · ~$500M FTX · 2022
up to $4B
Amazon · Sep 2023
Meanwhile, inside Google
“Code red” declared; Page & Brin recalled
Dec 2022
Google Brain + DeepMind fused into Google DeepMind
Apr 20, 2023
OpenAI ← Microsoft
2019$1B — first investment
2021round — further investment (amount not disclosed in source)
Jan 2023~$10B* — reported "multibillion" third phase
Anthropic (spun out of OpenAI, Dec 2020)
2021$124M — Series A, led by Jaan Tallinn
2022$580M — Series B (~$500M from SBF/FTX, which collapsed Nov 2022)
2023up to $2B — Google (after ~$300M early-2023 stake)
Sep 2023up to $4B — Amazon (initial $1.25B; completed Mar 2024)
Inside Google
Dec 2022"Code red"; Larry Page & Sergey Brin pulled back in
Apr 2023Brain + DeepMind merged into Google DeepMind
The same insiders who built GPT-2 and GPT-3 split over how fast to push, then watched both sides get absorbed into the balance sheets of the cloud giants. Independence now meant choosing a patron, not avoiding one.
SOURCE · NEURON MAKERS, CH. 25–27 & Research Dossiers 02–03. *The Microsoft ~$10B (Jan 23, 2023) is press-reported; Microsoft's announcement said only "multiyear, multibillion dollar." Amazon/Google figures are "up to" commitments. Marker positions are approximate by date; dot sizes are not proportional to dollars.