Anthropic in talks with Samsung to develop a custom AI chip

Anthropic, the AI safety startup that makes the Claude series of large language models, is in active discussions with Samsung to jointly develop a custom AI chip, The Economic Times has reported. The talks signal Anthropic's ambition to move up the hardware stack and gain greater control over the infrastructure that powers its models.

For Anthropic, the motivation is both strategic and economic. Training and running frontier AI models demands enormous quantities of specialised compute, and the cost of procuring chips from dominant suppliers such as Nvidia weighs heavily on AI companies' balance sheets. A bespoke chip — designed around Anthropic's specific model architectures — could deliver faster inference, lower energy consumption and reduced per-token costs.

Samsung brings formidable assets to the table. Its semiconductor division is one of the few in the world capable of designing and manufacturing cutting-edge chips at scale, and the South Korean giant has been actively courting AI clients as it seeks to challenge TSMC's dominance in advanced chip fabrication. A partnership with a high-profile AI lab like Anthropic would significantly bolster Samsung's credentials in the AI chip space.

The development also carries implications for India's fast-growing AI ecosystem. Indian enterprises increasingly rely on cloud APIs from Anthropic and its rivals, and the cost and availability of AI compute ultimately determines how affordable and accessible those services are. A successful custom-chip programme could make Claude-based services more competitive and more widely deployable.