Anthropic discusses custom chip with Samsung to rival OpenAI's Jalapeño
Anthropic follows OpenAI's custom chip push, but specs are still undecided.
Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, is reportedly exploring a custom chip collaboration with Samsung, according to The Information. This comes after Reuters reported in April that Anthropic was considering producing its own AI chips to mitigate chip shortages. However, the company has not yet decided on the chip's specific use case, how it will integrate into servers, or its performance targets. Anthropic told TechCrunch that a diversified hardware stack—including chips from Google, Amazon, and Nvidia—remains central to its compute strategy, declining further comment on the Samsung talks.
The move places Anthropic in direct competition with OpenAI, which last week announced its own custom inference processor, codenamed "Jalapeño," built with Broadcom. OpenAI claims the chip offers superior performance-per-watt compared to alternatives. Other cloud giants like Amazon and Google already offer custom TPUs. Samsung, already a key Nvidia partner for chip production, is also exploring collaborations with Google on chip-making. By developing custom silicon, Anthropic aims to gain independence from Nvidia's dominant position while potentially optimizing hardware for its specific AI workloads.
- Anthropic is in early talks with Samsung for a custom AI chip, though specs and use cases remain undecided.
- OpenAI recently announced its own custom inference chip 'Jalapeño' with Broadcom, claiming higher efficiency.
- Custom chips are a trend among AI companies to reduce Nvidia dependence and optimize for specific tasks.
Why It Matters
Custom AI chips signal a shift toward hardware diversification, potentially lowering costs and increasing competition against Nvidia's dominance.