Anthropic in talks with Samsung Electronics to build custom AI chips

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI models, is negotiating with Samsung Electronics to manufacture a custom AI chip. The partnership would represent a significant step in Anthropic’s broader strategy to diversify its chip supply away from Nvidia.

Why Samsung, and why now

Anthropic recently raised $65 billion in a Series H funding round, landing a valuation of $965 billion. That’s the highest ever recorded for an AI company, surpassing even OpenAI.

The round included strategic investors Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Micron Technology, all focused on memory, storage, and logic chips.

Samsung stands out from that group for one specific reason: it’s the only investor that actually operates a foundry business. Samsung doesn’t just design chips or make memory — it manufactures other companies’ chip designs in its own fabrication plants. That capability makes it a natural candidate to produce custom AI silicon for Anthropic.

Building custom chips, sometimes called ASICs (application-specific integrated circuits), lets AI companies optimize their hardware for their specific workloads. Google did this years ago with its TPU chips. Amazon has its Trainium and Inferentia. Anthropic appears to be following the same playbook.

The bigger picture for AI infrastructure

Anthropic isn’t putting all its eggs in Samsung’s basket. The company has reportedly been in discussions with Microsoft about Maia AI chips and has held talks with UK startup Fractile about inference chips.

Separate preliminary work by Samsung on custom AI chips for OpenAI had reportedly stalled as of early June 2026. If Samsung pivots that foundry capacity toward Anthropic instead, it would represent a meaningful reshuffling of alliances in the AI chip manufacturing landscape.

What this means for investors

Anthropic’s $965 billion valuation and its $65 billion raise underscore how much capital is flowing into AI infrastructure. These numbers dwarf most crypto fundraises by orders of magnitude.

Traders should watch for any formal announcement of a manufacturing contract. The jump from “strategic investor” to “foundry partner” is significant, and confirmation would likely move Samsung’s stock while reinforcing Anthropic’s position as the most aggressively capitalized private AI company in the world.

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