Anthropic Eyes Samsung for Custom AI Chips

Move aligns with industry shift from NVIDIA GPUs, could bolster Samsung's foundry amid Tesla, OpenAI ties

Anthropic, the world's most valuable private artificial intelligence (AI) startup with a valuation of 965 billion dollars, is in discussions with Samsung Electronics to produce its own AI chips, according to a report by U.S. IT media outlet The Information on the 2nd (local time).

Anthropic reportedly hired Clive Chan, who previously worked on custom chip development at OpenAI, last month to lead its in-house AI chip development. The company is also said to be in talks with multiple chip design firms. Once the detailed design is finalized, Anthropic is considering utilizing Samsung Electronics' 2-nanometer (1 nanometer equals one-billionth of a meter) foundry process and advanced packaging. The 2-nanometer process is the latest technology and the same one Samsung uses to manufacture Tesla's AI chips. Industry observers suggest that if Samsung secures the order for Anthropic's AI chips, it could boost the foundry business, which has recently secured big tech clients like Tesla.

Anthropic's move aligns with the tech industry trend of developing in-house AI chips to reduce reliance on NVIDIA's graphics processing units (GPUs), which are widely used in AI accelerators. Google has consistently released its own Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), while OpenAI recently unveiled its first custom inference chip, "Jalapeno," developed in collaboration with Broadcom. Anthropic avoided specific comments on its chip development plans, stating, "NVIDIA's GPUs, Google's TPUs, and Amazon Web Services' (AWS) 'Trainium' chips will continue to play a central role in Anthropic's computational resources."

In May, Anthropic announced a 65 billion dollars (approximately 100.1 trillion Korean won) investment round, with global memory giants Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron participating as strategic infrastructure partners. At the time, Anthropic noted, "These technologies play a key role in supplying memory, storage devices, and logic chips worldwide." South Korea's tech industry speculated that Anthropic, which is developing its own AI chips, might collaborate with Samsung's foundry business. Among the three memory companies that are Anthropic's strategic partners, Samsung is the only one operating a foundry business.