Samsung Foundry reportedly lands Anthropic AI chip order as 2nm race heats up
Samsung Foundry may be preparing for a major boost in the artificial intelligence chip market, as industry sources claim the company has secured a contract to manufacture AI chips for Anthropic. If accurate, the deal would mark an important win for Samsung’s contract chipmaking division at a time when demand for custom AI semiconductors is accelerating across the tech industry.
Anthropic has become one of the most closely watched companies in artificial intelligence, driven by the growing adoption of its Claude AI models and its expanding enterprise customer base. As AI workloads become larger and more expensive to run, companies developing advanced models are increasingly looking for ways to reduce their dependence on third-party accelerators.
The AI chip market is still heavily dominated by NVIDIA, whose GPUs power much of today’s generative AI infrastructure. However, major technology companies including Google, Amazon, OpenAI, Tesla and others have been investing in custom silicon to gain more control over performance, cost and power efficiency. Anthropic now appears to be moving in the same direction, and Samsung could play a central role in that effort.
According to industry sources cited in South Korea, Anthropic is expected to use Samsung’s advanced 2-nanometer manufacturing technology for its custom AI chip. The reported agreement could help Samsung Foundry regain momentum after facing intense competition in the contract chip manufacturing market.
Anthropic previously named several major memory suppliers as strategic infrastructure partners during its Series H funding announcement in May. Samsung, SK hynix and Micron were listed among the companies expected to help Anthropic scale its computing infrastructure as customer demand grows. While all three companies are major players in memory technology, Samsung is the only one among them with a foundry business capable of producing advanced non-memory semiconductors.
That distinction has fueled speculation that Samsung is the likely manufacturing partner for Anthropic’s custom AI processors. Sources familiar with the matter reportedly said Samsung’s foundry division has already decided to produce chips for Anthropic, with expectations that the order could help shift the business from losses toward renewed growth.
For Samsung, winning Anthropic as a foundry customer would be significant for several reasons. First, it would strengthen the company’s position in the fast-growing AI semiconductor supply chain. Second, it would provide a high-profile customer for Samsung’s 2nm process technology, which is expected to be critical in the next wave of high-performance computing chips. Finally, it would help Samsung compete more aggressively against other leading chip manufacturers in advanced process nodes.
The reported Anthropic deal also comes shortly after new details emerged about Samsung’s work with Tesla on the AI5 chip. A senior Samsung Foundry engineer, Kim Jeong-gon, recently stated that the Tesla-Samsung AI5 chip has entered the tape-out stage. Tape-out is one of the final steps in chip development, where the completed design is sent to the foundry so production tools can be prepared for manufacturing.
According to the statement, Tesla’s AI5 chip is expected to be produced at Samsung’s Taylor, Texas facility using a 2nm process. The chip is planned for use in Tesla’s future products, where it could support advanced AI workloads related to autonomous driving, robotics and other intelligent systems.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously made ambitious claims about AI5, suggesting that the chip could compete with NVIDIA’s Blackwell and Hopper products while offering lower power consumption and reduced cost. Whether those claims are realized remains to be seen, but the project highlights Samsung’s growing push to attract customers designing custom AI accelerators.
The broader trend is clear: AI companies want more specialized chips. Training and running advanced models requires massive amounts of computing power, and off-the-shelf GPUs can be expensive and difficult to secure in large quantities. Custom AI chips allow companies to optimize hardware for their own workloads, improve energy efficiency and potentially reduce long-term infrastructure costs.
For Anthropic, developing its own AI chip could become a strategic advantage as it continues to scale. With enterprise demand for AI assistants, coding tools and automation platforms rising quickly, compute capacity is becoming one of the most important factors in the AI race. A custom chip manufactured on Samsung’s 2nm process could help Anthropic support larger models and more users while keeping infrastructure costs under control.
For Samsung Foundry, the reported contract represents another opportunity to prove its advanced manufacturing capabilities. The company has invested heavily in next-generation process technologies and new production facilities, including its U.S. fab in Taylor. Securing major AI chip customers would help justify those investments and could improve Samsung’s standing in the global semiconductor market.
Although neither Samsung nor Anthropic has officially confirmed the reported manufacturing deal, the timing aligns with a major industry shift. AI developers are no longer relying solely on existing chip suppliers. Instead, they are building deeper hardware strategies, forming infrastructure partnerships and designing chips tailored to their own platforms.
If Samsung does manufacture Anthropic’s AI chips using its 2nm process, the partnership could become one of the more important developments in the custom AI silicon market. It would give Anthropic a stronger foundation for future AI growth and give Samsung Foundry a valuable win in one of the most competitive areas of the semiconductor industry.
