Anthropic in early talks with Samsung for custom AI chip
Get the Tech newsletter
Daily tech — startups, AI labs, chips, the launches that shape the next decade. Free.
- Anthropic has initiated early-stage development of a custom AI server chip and held preliminary discussions with Samsung about manufacturing it, according to The Information.
- Anthropic has not yet determined what the chip will be used for, how it will integrate into servers, or how powerful it will be, per the report.
- Anthropic told TechCrunch that a diversified hardware stack spanning chips from Google, Amazon, and Nvidia will remain central to its compute strategy, and declined to comment further on a potential Samsung partnership.
- The Samsung talks follow April reports that Anthropic was exploring producing its own AI chips in response to chip shortages.
- The move comes one week after OpenAI teamed up with Broadcom to announce its own custom-built inference processor, dubbed "Jalapeño," which OpenAI says delivers better performance-per-watt than competing chips.
- Samsung is already deeply embedded in AI chipmaking, partnering with Nvidia on chip production and software, jointly building an AI chip factory in South Korea, and discussing chip partnerships with Google.
Why it matters: Anthropic is the latest major AI lab to pursue custom silicon as a hedge against Nvidia dependence, but with no defined use case or specs, the Samsung talks remain exploratory. The timing directly mirrors OpenAI's Broadcom "Jalapeño" announcement, signaling that custom-chip development is becoming a competitive front between the two leading AI labs.
