Challenge Nvidia’s dominance! Anthropic reportedly joins forces with Samsung to develop custom AI chips, and Claude’s underlying compute stack is set for a major overhaul.

The clarion call to break Nvidia's computing power hegemony sounds again! According to the latest report from U.S. media outlet The Information today (2nd), Anthropic, the AI startup giant behind one of the most powerful models, Claude, is currently in talks with South Korean tech giant Samsung Electronics about contract manufacturing of custom AI chips. If the deal materializes, Anthropic will deploy its self-developed chips directly in its own servers. This move not only significantly reduces operating costs but also highlights the grand ambition of top AI companies to accelerate "computing power autonomy."
(Previous summary: Claude Sonnet 5 launches: Anthropic claims performance in many areas approaches Opus, but API costs 60% less)
(Background supplement: Fable 5, Mythos 5 are returning! Anthropic officially announces relaunch tomorrow, U.S. Commerce Department lifts export controls)

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• Anthropic Begins Chip Development, Samsung Sees AI Foundry Windfall Opportunity
• Nvidia's Monopoly Status vs. AI Giants' Custom Chip Strategy Comparison
• Computing Power Autonomy Becomes Trend, Nvidia's Moat Faces Test

As the AI arms race heats up in 2026, controlling "computing power" means controlling future pricing power. To no longer let chip suppliers choke its development, U.S. top AI company Anthropic has officially taken the first step toward hardware autonomy.

According to the latest report from authoritative U.S. tech media The Information released on the morning of July 2, 2026, the developer of the well-known generative AI service Claude, Anthropic, is currently in deep business discussions with South Korean semiconductor giant Samsung Electronics to explore the possibility of Samsung producing "custom AI chips" for it.

Anthropic Begins Chip Development, Samsung Sees AI Foundry Windfall Opportunity

The report, citing sources familiar with the matter, indicates that Anthropic has already entered the early stages of developing its own custom silicon (ASIC). This AI startup, founded by former OpenAI executives and heavily invested in by Amazon and Google, plans to install these chips, optimized for its neural network architecture, directly into its own servers that power the underlying computations of the Claude model.

For Samsung Electronics, which has been struggling to catch up with TSMC in advanced processes and foundry services, successfully landing an order from a globally significant player like Anthropic would undoubtedly inject a powerful shot in the arm for its foundry business and help it regain ground in the AI chip manufacturing landscape.

Nvidia's Monopoly Status vs. AI Giants' Custom Chip Strategy Comparison

Anthropic's move into custom chips reflects the collective anxiety across the AI industry about over-reliance on a single hardware supplier. According to data cited in The Information's report, Nvidia currently holds approximately 74% of the global AI chip market share, representing near-absolute monopoly dominance.

| Comparison Dimension | | --- | Nvidia General-Purpose GPU Solution | Anthropic Custom ASIC Solution | | --- | --- | --- | | Market Position & Share | Absolute dominant player, holding about 74% of the global AI chip market. | Dedicated accelerator deeply customized for its own models (e.g., Claude). | | Performance & Applicability | Highly versatile, suitable for training and inference of various model architectures. | Forgoes versatility, focuses on improving inference efficiency and energy consumption ratio for specific algorithms. | | Cost Structure & Risk | Extremely high per-unit procurement cost (often tens of thousands of dollars), facing supply chain shortage risks. | Requires massive upfront R&D investment, but can significantly reduce long-term server operating costs after mass production. |

Computing Power Autonomy Becomes Trend, Nvidia's Moat Faces Test

As the parameter sizes of large language models (LLMs) continue to balloon, the daily operating costs of model inference have become the heaviest burden for AI companies. While purchasing expensive Nvidia general-purpose GPUs is a shortcut to capturing the market early, developing dedicated ASICs (Application-Specific Integrated Circuits) is the ultimate solution to reduce costs after scaling.

In fact, not only Anthropic, but also Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and even its biggest competitor OpenAI, are actively developing or have already launched their own custom AI chips. Although Anthropic's chip-building plan is still in its early stages, and it may take years before actual tape-out and large-scale deployment, this undercurrent of "de-Nvidia-ization" is steadily eroding Nvidia's long-term pricing power and market dominance.