The AI contender to the apparent market leader finished a $2 million funding round and now has a $60 billion valuation.

Google is making a fresh investment of more than $1bn into OpenAI rival Anthropic, boosting its position in the start-up as Silicon Valley titans rush to develop cutting-edge artificial intelligence systems.

The cash infusion comes on top of the $2 billion that Google has already provided to the artificial intelligence developer. Separately, Anthropic is said to be raising $2 billion from a group of institutional investors led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. The latter deal is expected to value the company at $60 billion.

Google is pumping another one billion dollars into generative AI company Anthropic after investing more than two billion last year.