Anthropic is building its own AI chips

Anthropic Moves to Build Its Own Hardware

@AnthropicAI has confirmed it is assembling an in-house custom silicon team, formally entering the race to design proprietary AI chips. The company said it is building the team to respond to a shortage of chips needed to power and develop more advanced AI systems, and will hire engineers with experience across the hardware and software stack to help co-design custom chips and AI models that can make @claudeai run faster and more efficiently at the scale required by customers.

Last month, The Information reported that Anthropic was scouting Samsung as a potential manufacturing partner for building such chips. Anthropic did not provide a timeline for its chip plans or say whether it intends to manufacture them itself.

The custom silicon team job listing specified candidates who have shipped silicon and are comfortable making consequential calls without a large organization behind them, signaling a lean, senior team. The company is offering $320,000 to $485,000 annually for chip engineers, reflecting the genuine scarcity of engineers who can co-design AI accelerators.

Following a Broader Industry Push Into Custom Silicon

Anthropic said custom silicon is the latest step in its multi-chip strategy, and that it would continue to rely on a diversified hardware stack that includes technology from Amazon Web Services, Google, Nvidia, and AMD. The decision to design its own chips comes as demand for Claude rises while AI companies snap up as many infrastructure deals as they can.

The move follows a string of similar bets across the industry. On June 24, 2026, OpenAI and Broadcom unveiled Jalapeño, OpenAI's first custom-built AI inference processor. The chip is an ASIC, which industry experts say is less flexible than Nvidia's GPU but also less expensive and can be designed for specific AI tasks. OpenAI said it designed the chip in nine months. Meanwhile, Google DeepMind has long relied on Alphabet's proprietary TPU chips, and Meta is actively preparing to put its next-generation MTIA accelerators into production.

Designing an advanced AI chip can cost roughly half a billion dollars, according to industry sources, as companies need to employ skilled engineers and spend to ensure the manufacturing process has no defects. For Anthropic, the strategic logic is clear: the company will co-design silicon and Claude models together, targeting roughly 50% cuts in per-token inference costs.

Sources:
TechCrunch: Anthropic is hiring an AI chip design team
Reuters via Yahoo Finance: Anthropic to build in-house chip design team for Claude
Broadcom Investor Relations: OpenAI and Broadcom Unveil Jalapeño Intelligence Processor