Anthropic Opens Samsung Chip Talks as AI Labs Race to Break Free from Nvidia
Anthropic has entered early discussions with Samsung Electronics to manufacture a custom artificial intelligence chip, The Information reported on July 2, citing multiple people familiar with the matter. The conversations are at a preliminary stage — Anthropic has not yet decided what the chip will do, how powerful it needs to be, or how it would fit into a server, according to TechCrunch. Samsung declined to comment on the discussions. The move represents a significant strategic departure for Anthropic, which has until now relied entirely on chips rented from Amazon Web Services, Google, and Nvidia to train and run its Claude models.
According to The Information, Anthropic is specifically evaluating Samsung's two-nanometer manufacturing process and its advanced chip-packaging facilities. Samsung's SF2P two-nanometer node, which is set to enter production later in 2026, is specifically optimised for data centre chips and could give Anthropic access to some of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing available outside TSMC. The reported chip is expected to focus primarily on AI inference — the process of running trained models to generate responses — rather than training new models from scratch, according to The Tech Portal. A custom inference chip could allow Anthropic to run Claude faster, reduce power consumption, and lower cloud infrastructure costs.
The competitive context is unmistakable. OpenAI unveiled its own custom inference processor, called Jalapeño, built in partnership with Broadcom, just weeks before Anthropic's Samsung talks were disclosed. According to TechCrunch, Anthropic's discussions with Samsung appear to be at least partly a response to that move. Samsung is not a random choice for the Claude developer: the South Korean chipmaker participated in Anthropic's $65 billion Series H funding round completed in May 2026, alongside SK Hynix and Micron, as a strategic infrastructure partner. Anthropic is also reportedly in discussions with Microsoft and British chip startup Fractile, pointing to a competitive evaluation rather than a single committed partner.
The commercial stakes for Samsung are considerable. Its foundry division has long struggled to close the gap with TSMC, which dominates advanced chip manufacturing. According to Seoul Economic Daily, following last year's Tesla AI chip win, Samsung's order backlog for AI server semiconductors is growing substantially, with industry analysts projecting that its medium- to long-term backlog could approach 50 trillion won. Samsung is separately in discussions with Meta over production of Meta's proprietary MTIA 3rd Generation AI accelerator. Industry analysts cited by Seoul Economic Daily said a return to operating profit for the foundry division could come as early as the fourth quarter of 2026.
The broader significance extends well beyond either company. TrendForce projects that shipments of servers using custom application-specific integrated circuits will grow 44.6% in 2026, compared to just 16.1% growth for servers using general-purpose Nvidia GPUs. Nvidia remains the dominant AI chip supplier, but a wave of bespoke silicon from OpenAI, Google, Amazon, Meta, and now potentially Anthropic is gradually eroding that dependency. Anthropic has simultaneously announced a $50 billion initiative to build its own AI data centres in the United States. If the Samsung partnership advances, the company that built its reputation entirely on model safety and research rigour will have quietly become a vertically integrated hardware-and-software AI powerhouse.