In Brief

Anthropic is building a team to design its own custom chips for AI usage.

Business Insider was first to report on the news, but Anthropic has since confirmed with TechCrunch.

The Claude maker said it is planning to co-design hardware and models 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 such chips.

Anthropic’s decision to design its own chips comes as demand for Claude rises while AI companies snatch up as many AI infrastructure deals as they can. 

For its part, Anthropic has inked deals with AWS, Google, Nvidia, and AMD to access AI computing hardware. But to really scale to meet the level of demand, relying on others clearly isn’t enough.

Anthropic isn’t the first AI company to decide to build its own chip. In June, OpenAI unveiled its Broadcom-built Jalapeño chip, which is 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 “custom silicon team,” per a job listing.

This article has been updated to include confirmation from Anthropic.