Anthropic in early talks with Samsung to build a custom AI chip on its 2nm process

Anthropic is negotiating with Samsung to fabricate a custom AI chip on Samsung's 2-nanometer process, a move to diversify compute beyond Nvidia alongside its Google TPU and AWS Trainium work. Samsung joined Anthropic's $65B round with SK Hynix and Micron but is the only one of the three that runs its own foundry, and a foundry contract would reshuffle chip-manufacturing alliances — Samsung's earlier custom-silicon work for OpenAI had reportedly stalled by early June 2026.

Source: cryptobriefing.com ↗

Samsung doesn't just design chips or make memory — it manufactures other companies' chip designs in its own fabrication plants.

Why this matters

→ Anthropic reduces reliance on Nvidia by securing custom chip manufacturing capacity.
→ Samsung's foundry pivot signals major reshuffling of AI chip alliances away from OpenAI.
→ Custom ASICs optimize inference costs, critical as AI inference spending scales.

Foundry wars heat up