Anthropic in Talks with Samsung Electronics for AI Chip Collaboration

American artificial intelligence company Anthropic is reportedly exploring a partnership with Samsung Electronics to develop its own custom AI chips, according to sources cited by The Information. This potential collaboration could mark a significant win for Samsung's foundry business, adding a major AI player to its client roster alongside Tesla, Nvidia, and Apple.

Anthropic is said to be in the early stages of designing its own AI chips and is considering Samsung's cutting-edge 2-nanometer process technology and advanced packaging capabilities. While the project is still in its nascent phase, there remains a possibility that Anthropic may not proceed with its in-house chip development plans.

The move aligns with a growing trend among global tech giants to develop proprietary AI semiconductors. Companies like Google with its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) and Amazon Web Services with its Trainium chips are already utilizing custom hardware to optimize performance and reduce dependence on expensive Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs). OpenAI recently unveiled its own AI inference chip, 'Jalapeño,' developed in partnership with Broadcom, while Meta Platforms and Microsoft are also pursuing in-house chip development.

Samsung Electronics had previously invested in Anthropic's $65 billion funding round in May, alongside other major memory chip manufacturers like SK Hynix and Micron. At the time, Anthropic highlighted the strategic importance of these partners in supplying memory, storage, and logic chips. Given Samsung's unique position as the only one of the top three memory makers with logic chip manufacturing capabilities, industry observers had anticipated a potential foundry partnership.

Industry attention is now focused on whether this potential deal could bolster Samsung Foundry's competitiveness against Taiwan's TSMC, the current market leader. With the surging demand for AI chips straining TSMC's production capacity, Samsung sees an opportunity to attract new clients. However, Samsung's 2nm process yield, reportedly around 50-60%, remains a challenge that needs stabilization.

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The technology of these companies plays a key role in the global supply of memory, storage, and logic chips.