Samsung Positioned to Manufacture Custom AI Chips for Anthropic Following Historic $65 Billion Funding Round

Speculation is mounting across the semiconductor and artificial intelligence sectors that Samsung Foundry could soon begin manufacturing custom, high-performance AI chips for Anthropic. The rumor has gained significant traction following the close of Anthropic's record-breaking $65 billion Series H funding round, which valued the San Francisco-based startup at a historic $965 billion post-money. This valuation officially makes Anthropic the most valuable AI startup in the world, eclipsing its primary rivals.

Among the list of participants in the monumental Series H round were three prominent hardware giants: Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron, participating as strategic infrastructure partners. In its official announcement, Anthropic explicitly noted that these partners' technologies play a critical role in the world's supply of memory, storage, and logic chips.

Industry analysts and Korean media quickly pointed out a telling detail: among the three named strategic hardware partners, only Samsung operates a commercial foundry division capable of manufacturing advanced logic chips. While SK Hynix and Micron are leading powerhouses in memory and storage, Samsung stands alone in possessing the cutting-edge manufacturing facilities required to fabricate custom logic processors. This has led market observers to conclude that a direct silicon manufacturing agreement between Samsung and Anthropic is highly likely.

A Crucial Opportunity for Samsung Foundry

For Samsung Foundry, securing a contract with Anthropic would represent a massive strategic victory. Samsung’s contract manufacturing division has faced challenging financial headwind and losses in recent years, struggling to close the market-share gap with industry leader Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC). A high-profile partnership with the world's most valuable AI startup would provide a major boost to Samsung's efforts to diversify its client portfolio.

Samsung is not entirely without momentum in this space. The company's foundry division already has existing high-profile deals, including a landmark $16.5 billion contract signed in July 2025 to manufacture Tesla's next-generation AI5 and AI6 chips, alongside reports of manufacturing Groq 3 LPU chips for Nvidia.

According to unconfirmed reports and industry insiders, Samsung is eager to market its "one-stop turnkey" capability. By integrating its leading-edge memory technologies—including its recently sampled 7th-generation HBM4E chips—with its advanced foundry nodes and packaging solutions, Samsung can offer AI companies an entirely integrated pipeline. A semiconductor industry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, observed that Samsung's investment in Anthropic should be interpreted not as a simple equity stake, but as a clear signal that the South Korean giant is actively expanding strategic relationships with foundational players in the AI era. The official added that expectations are rising regarding whether Samsung's foundry business can seize this new opportunity on the back of the expanding AI market.

Anthropic's Surging Demand for Compute

Anthropic, founded in 2021 by former OpenAI members including CEO Dario Amodei and President Daniela Amodei, is experiencing unprecedented growth. The company’s annualized run-rate revenue skyrocketed to over $47 billion in May 2026, a massive leap from the approximately $9 billion recorded at the end of 2025. This rapid commercial success and the expanding usage of its Claude AI models have created an insatiable need for computing infrastructure.

To keep pace, Anthropic has pursued an aggressive, multi-pronged infrastructure strategy. The company has secured an expansive agreement with Amazon for up to 5 gigawatts of compute capacity, backed by a massive investment from the cloud giant that could scale up to $20 billion. CEO Dario Amodei noted that the collaboration with Amazon allows Anthropic to continue advancing its AI research while delivering Claude to its customers, including more than 100,000 businesses building on AWS.

Additionally, Anthropic holds an agreement with Google and Broadcom to secure 5 gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity, expected to come online starting in 2027. Anthropic Chief Financial Officer Krishna Rao characterized this partnership with Google and Broadcom as a continuation of a disciplined approach to scaling infrastructure, building the capacity necessary to serve the exponential growth of their customer base while enabling Claude to define the frontier of AI development. Anthropic also possesses agreements with SpaceX, giving the company access to the ultra-powerful Colossus 1 and Colossus 2 supercomputers.

Forward-Looking Implications

If the rumored partnership crystallizes, it could reshape the competitive dynamics of the AI chip market. By partnering with Samsung, Anthropic would secure a reliable, alternative pipeline of custom logic chips, diversifying its supply chain and decreasing its dependency on TSMC's highly congested manufacturing lines.

For Samsung, the partnership would validate its roadmap for "physical AI semiconductors." Samsung Foundry, in collaboration with Cadence, is currently developing a specialized chiplet platform targeting physical AI systems like robotics and autonomous vehicles. The company plans to tape out this platform in early 2027, with the goal of reaching commercial volume production in the second half of 2027. Gaining Anthropic's backing now could accelerate the adoption of these platforms and solidify Samsung's position as an indispensable hardware pillar of the generative AI revolution.