Anthropic is negotiating with Samsung to produce a specialized AI chip.

      TL;DR: Anthropic is in early discussions with Samsung regarding a custom AI chip, but no design has yet been established and the project is still in its preliminary phases.

      Anthropic is negotiating with Samsung Electronics to potentially create a custom AI chip, as reported by The Information on Thursday. The project is still in its infancy, and Anthropic has yet to determine the chip's purpose, performance, or integration into servers. There is also the possibility that the project could be completely abandoned.

      In response to inquiries, Anthropic informed TechCrunch that a varied hardware stack, including chips from Google, Amazon, and Nvidia, will remain crucial to its computing strategy, stating they have no additional comments on the discussions with Samsung. Samsung is already a key player in the AI chip supply chain, serving as a significant manufacturing partner for Nvidia by producing chips that facilitate AI training and inference tasks. The two companies are also collaborating on the establishment of an AI chip factory in South Korea.

      These discussions follow an April report from Reuters indicating that Anthropic was considering developing its own chips due to Claude's computational needs exceeding available resources. At that time, the effort was still in its early stages, with no dedicated team or commitment to a specific design. A notable change since April is the hiring of Clive Chan, who previously contributed to OpenAI's custom chip program, signaling a shift from exploration to active development for Anthropic.

      This timing also aligns with actions taken by Anthropic's primary competitor. Recently, OpenAI launched its inaugural custom chip, an inference processor developed by Broadcom, known as the "Intelligence Processor," aimed at reducing reliance on Nvidia hardware. Both Amazon and Google have introduced their own custom silicon for their cloud services, while Anthropic currently employs Claude across all three chip families.

      Earlier this year, Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate exceeded $30 billion, significantly increasing from approximately $9 billion at the end of 2025, making the economics of custom silicon increasingly appealing. In April, the company secured a long-term agreement with Google and Broadcom for around 3.5 gigawatts of TPU compute beginning in 2027. However, creating its own chips would offer Anthropic greater control over the hardware that operates its models. Whether Samsung or a different manufacturer ultimately constructs a chip for Anthropic remains uncertain, but the industry trend away from complete dependence on Nvidia is becoming clear.