Anthropic weighs custom AI silicon with Samsung to cut Nvidia dependency

The move signals a critical shift from general-purpose GPUs to vertically integrated, task-specific silicon as model providers hit the physical limits of current data center capacity. By exploring Samsung’s 2nm node, Anthropic is attempting to secure long-term hardware independence and lower the escalating costs of inference for its Claude models. This creates a more fragmented B2B infrastructure market, where proprietary chips from Amazon, Google, and now Anthropic compete directly with Nvidia’s H-series dominance. Watch for whether Anthropic formalizes a design before 2027, as it currently relies on a multi-gigawatt TPU agreement with Google and Broadcom to meet demand.

The push for custom silicon comes as Anthropic faces massive operational scaling pressures. Per reporting from Aragon Research in May 2026, the company was forced to throttle user access to its Claude CoWork product earlier in the year due to hardware bottlenecks. This led to a reinforced infrastructure partnership with Amazon, including a reported $100 billion spend commitment over ten years to secure up to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity across AWS’s Trainium to Trainium4 chips. Simultaneously, Anthropic has utilized Google’s TPU v7 Ironwood chips to support its frontier model training, confirming that its strategy remains hardware-agnostic for now to ensure regional resilience.

Samsung’s potential role as a manufacturer is a strategic play to narrow the market gap with TSMC. According to the Korea Herald in July 2026, Samsung held only 4% of the global foundry market in early 2026 compared to TSMC’s 38%. By courting AI labs like Anthropic and reportedly discussing memory-connect components for Google’s upcoming 'Icefish' processor, Samsung is positioning its 2nm process as a viable alternative for the next generation of AI accelerators. Meanwhile, rival OpenAI’s partnership with Broadcom for the 'Jalapeño' processor, announced in June 2026, has already reached the laboratory testing stage with initial data center deployment with Microsoft expected by year-end 2026.