Anthropic pursues custom AI chip with Samsung to reduce NVIDIA reliance

Anthropic has begun exploratory talks with Samsung Electronics to develop custom AI chips, according to reporting by The Information on July 2. The effort reflects Anthropic's push for vertical integration and supply-chain diversification: the company has hired specialized silicon engineers and is still defining chip specifications, power requirements, and integration into server clusters. Success would reduce Anthropic's dependence on NVIDIA’s monopoly and give Samsung a high-profile foundry customer alongside Tesla and other major AI labs.

The move signals a broader industry trend: Anthropic joins OpenAI, Google, and Meta in pursuing in-house silicon to manage both costs and geopolitical supply risk. Anthropic has already signed major compute commitments with Amazon (5GW), Google and Broadcom (5GW of TPU capacity), and SpaceX; custom silicon would represent the next phase of stack control. Samsung’s foundry business (vs. memory operations) has been working to compete with TSMC at advanced nodes (3nm, below) but has struggled to land marquee customers outside its affiliate companies.

Anthropic’s timing is strategic: the company just raised $65B in Series H at $965B valuation and filed for IPO (confidential S-1 on June 1). The chip initiative signals to investors that the company is investing in durable cost advantages and supply-chain moats ahead of public markets. For Samsung, a successful partnership would mark a breakthrough win in foundry competition and validate its pitch to other frontier AI labs that want an alternative to TSMC. For NVIDIA, this represents a category risk: each frontier lab that builds custom silicon reduces GPU TAM and forces NVIDIA to compete on software/platform, not silicon alone.

For infrastructure teams and strategic buyers, Anthropic’s chip effort matters because it signals that frontier model economics depend on controlling the full stack: compute, memory, power, and inference silicon. Expect OpenAI and Anthropic both to announce custom silicon partnerships this year, following Meta and Google. The competitive dynamic will accelerate foundry competition and potentially give Samsung, Intel, or other fab operators new leverage against TSMC’s dominance.