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Anthropic is discussing a new custom chip with Samsung
Anthropic, the AI company backed by Google and Amazon, is reportedly moving forward with plans to develop its own AI chips as a response to chip shortages. According to a report by The Information on Thursday, Anthropic has approached Samsung to explore a potential collaboration on the chip. However, the company has not yet determined the chip's specific use case, server integration, or performance specifications. When contacted by TechCrunch, Anthropic stated that a diversified hardware stack—including chips from Google, Amazon, and Nvidia—remains central to its compute strategy. The company declined to comment further on the potential Samsung partnership. This move aligns with a broader trend among AI firms seeking custom chips to achieve greater independence from Nvidia, which still dominates the chip market. Last week, Anthropic’s key competitor, OpenAI, announced a partnership with Broadcom to develop its own custom inference processor, codenamed "Jalapeño," which OpenAI claims offers better performance-per-watt than rival chips. Amazon and Google already offer custom-built TPUs through their cloud platforms. Samsung is deeply embedded in the AI industry, acting as a major partner for Nvidia by producing chips needed for AI training and inference. The two companies are jointly building an AI chip factory in South Korea. Separately, Samsung has also discussed partnering with Google on chip-making efforts. Anthropic’s chip development is still in early stages, with no final decisions on architecture or deployment. The company continues to rely on existing hardware from multiple suppliers while exploring custom silicon to address supply chain constraints and optimize performance for its AI workloads.