Nobel-winning AI giant Demis Hassabis was early Anthropic investor: FT

The founder of Google's AI lab DeepMind Demis Hassabis was an early investor in US startup Anthropic, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday.

The disclosure sheds light on the extent of the Nobel Prize winner's influence over the global artificial intelligence race.

The British newspaper said Hassabis was an "angel investor" in the California-based company known for its Claude model, citing unnamed sources.


Anthropic, a key player in the booming AI landscape, has announced a string of major agreements in recent months as it looks to secure the computing power needed to meet its growing needs.

These include megadeals with Google and Broadcom, Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia and SpaceX, and an infrastructure investment with Fluidstack.

Hassabis co-founded DeepMind in 2010, which then focused on using artificial neural networks -- which are loosely based on the human brain and underpin artificial intelligence -- to beat humans at board and video games.

Google bought the company four years later.

In 2016, DeepMind shot to fame when its AI-driven computer program AlphaZero beat the world's top player of the ancient Chinese board game Go.

AlphaZero has since beat the world champion chess program Stockfish and conquered various retro video games.

Hassabis was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2024 for pioneering artificial intelligence techniques.