Anthropic is getting serious about making its own AI chips. The company is in discussions with Samsung about manufacturing a custom processor, according to a report from The Information.
Here’s the thing — Anthropic hasn’t decided what the chip will actually do yet. Not what it’ll be used for, not how it fits into a server, not even how powerful it should be. They’re still in the exploratory phase.
Why build custom silicon? Independence. Nvidia still dominates the AI chip market, and companies like Anthropic want options. A diversified hardware stack — Google, Amazon, Nvidia chips — will stay central to their strategy, Anthropic told TechCrunch. But having their own chip in the mix changes the math.
The timing isn’t random. OpenAI just announced its own custom inference chip called “Jalapeño,” built with Broadcom. That announcement came last week. Google and Amazon already have custom TPUs and Trainium chips in their cloud offerings.
Samsung is no stranger to AI hardware. They’re already a major Nvidia partner, producing chips for training and inference. They’re also building an AI chip factory in South Korea with Nvidia, and they’ve talked with Google about chip-making too.
Back in April, Reuters reported Anthropic was exploring the idea of building its own chips to deal with shortages. Looks like that exploration is turning into something real.
