Google is investing in generative artificial intelligence (AI) startups to secure future major cloud customers. It’s interpreted as a method for Google, which is comparatively behind Amazon and Microsoft within the cloud competition, to expand its cloud base based on AI.

The Information said on the thirty first (local time) that Google is investing about $100 million with a $1.5 billion enterprise value in Runway, an AI startup that permits users to generate videos from text descriptions, citing sources conversant in the inner circumstances. Reported.

Competition between Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, which dominate the worldwide cloud market, is intensifying. Google and Microsoft, latecomers, are aggressively increasing their investments to catch Amazon, the industry leader.

They’re searching for to expand the cloud ecosystem centered on their platform through contracts that require them to speculate of their customers and use their cloud products for several years as a substitute.

This investment also appears to be in keeping with the most recent trend of cloud firms partnering with AI startups as the sphere of generative AI grows.

Runway has been using Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its cloud service. Amazon has also highlighted Runway as considered one of its key AI startup customers.

Nonetheless, The Information said that Runway, which received funding from Google, would eventually use Google Cloud services.

Meanwhile, in February, Google also invested $300 million in Antropic, a startup that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, to secure a ten% stake and provide Google cloud services to Antropic.

Also, earlier in January, Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI and exclusively supplied Azure cloud services to OpenAI.

Reporter Park Chan cpark@aitimes.com