Anthropic is hiring an AI chip design team

Anthropic is building a team to design its own custom chips for AI workloads, the company confirmed to TechCrunch after Business Insider first reported the news. The Claude maker said it plans to co-design hardware and models together to help its technology run faster and more efficiently. Last month, The Information reported that Anthropic was scouting Samsung as a potential partner for building the chips.

The move comes as demand for Claude rises while AI companies compete for as many AI infrastructure deals as they can secure. Anthropic has already struck deals with AWS, Google, Nvidia, and AMD for access to AI computing hardware, but relying on outside suppliers alone isn’t enough to scale to the level of demand the company is seeing.

Anthropic isn’t the first AI company to decide to build its own chip. In June, OpenAI unveiled its Broadcom-built Jalapeño chip, designed specifically for inference workloads. Google DeepMind has long relied on Alphabet’s TPU chips to power its AI models, while Meta has been developing its own MTIA accelerators for AI workloads.

The company is seeking engineers with experience in chip design for its new custom silicon team, according to a job listing.

Why it matters

As every major AI lab races to secure enough compute to meet surging demand, designing proprietary chips gives Anthropic a way to reduce its dependence on external hardware suppliers and tune silicon specifically for how Claude runs.