Samsung Reportedly in Talks with Anthropic for Custom AI Chip Manufacturing

The Cryptonomist and other outlets have reported that Samsung Electronics is being considered as the contract manufacturer for custom AI chips designed by or for Anthropic, the AI company. If confirmed, this would mark a significant shift in the semiconductor foundry landscape during the AI era.

The report suggests Samsung could leverage its advanced process nodes to produce custom ASICs optimized for Anthropic's large language model training and inference workloads. Anthropic currently runs its models on rented NVIDIA H100 and B200 GPUs through cloud providers, making custom silicon an attractive path to reduce costs.

Samsung has been aggressively expanding its foundry business to close the gap with market leader TSMC. The Korean giant has touted progress on its 2nm GAA process and began mass-producing 3nm chips in 2025. Winning a marquee AI customer like Anthropic would give Samsung's foundry business a critical validation point.

For Anthropic, the strategic rationale is clear. The global surge in AI compute demand has created a GPU supply bottleneck. Custom chips would allow Anthropic to reduce its dependence on a single GPU supplier while gaining hardware architected for its model family, improving inference throughput.

This fits a broader pattern: top AI companies are pursuing hardware independence. OpenAI is reportedly developing its own AI chips, while Microsoft and Google have long invested in custom silicon (Maia, TPU). Anthropic's move signals the AI industry is transitioning from renting general-purpose compute to building purpose-built hardware.

However, the report remains unconfirmed, and neither Samsung nor Anthropic has officially commented. Key questions include whether Samsung can deliver competitive yields and sufficient capacity, and whether U.S. chip export controls could complicate production at its Korean facilities.