Anthropic is discussing a new custom chip with Samsung

In April, Reuters reported that Anthropic has been toying with the idea of ​​producing its own AI chips in response to chip shortages. Now it looks like the company is taking this idea seriously.

On Thursday, The information reported that Anthropic was in contact with Samsung to explore a collaboration around the pending chip. However, according to the report, Anthropic has not yet decided what the chip will be used for, how it will fit into the server, or how powerful it will be.

When asked for comment, Anthropic told TechCrunch that a diversified hardware stack including chips from Google, Amazon and Nvidia will remain critical to its computing strategy. On the topic of a possible Samsung partnership, the company said it had nothing further to add.

A number of AI companies have attempted to develop custom chips – both as a way to create unique hardware for specific computing tasks and to gain a degree of independence from Nvidia, which remains the undisputed leader of the chip industry.

Anthropic’s announcement could also be a response to an announcement made last week by its main competitor, OpenAI, which teamed up with Broadcom to announce its own custom inference processor called “Jalapeño.” OpenAI says the chip is more efficient and shows better performance per watt than other competitive chips. Amazon And Googling both offer custom TPUs as part of their cloud offerings.

Samsung is already embedded in the AI ​​industry and serves as a key partner to Nvidia, produce chips that the company needs to train or use its AI models. Samsung, in turn, uses Nvidia’s software to manufacture its chips. The duo is working on an AI chip factory in South Korea. Samsung has that too cooperation discussed with Google over its chip-making efforts.