In April, Reuters reported that Anthropic was considering the idea of producing its own AI chips as a way to address the chip shortage. Now, it appears the company is taking the idea seriously.
On Thursday, The Information reported that Anthropic is in contact with Samsung to consider cooperation regarding the pending chip. However, according to the report, Anthropic has not yet decided what this chip will be used for, how it will fit into its servers, or how powerful it will be.
When asked for comment, Anthropic told TechCrunch that its diverse hardware stack, which includes chips from Google, Amazon and Nvidia, remains critical to the company’s computing strategy. The company said it had nothing further to say about the potential partnership with Samsung.
Many AI companies have explored developing custom chips. This is both as a way to create its own hardware for specific computing tasks and to gain some independence from Nvidia, which remains the undisputed leader in the chip industry.
Anthropic’s announcement could also be a response to an announcement made last week by its main competitor, OpenAI. OpenAI has partnered with Broadcom to introduce its own custom inference processor called “Jalapeño.” OpenAI says the chip is more efficient and delivers better performance per watt than other competing chips. Amazon and Google both offer custom-built TPUs as part of their cloud offerings.
Samsung is already embedded in the AI industry, serving as a key partner for Nvidia and producing the chips the company needs to train and run AI models. Samsung, on the other hand, uses Nvidia’s software to manufacture its chips. The two work at an AI chip factory in South Korea. Samsung is also in talks to partner with Google on chip manufacturing efforts.
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