From Tesla, Meta to Anthropic, Samsung Electronics' chip foundry order backlog has reached 50 trillion Korean won.

Samsung Electronics is rapidly establishing its core position in the AI semiconductor market through its foundry business.

On July 3, according to South Korean media reports, Samsung's foundry division has a medium- to long-term order backlog nearing 50 trillion Korean won. After securing the Tesla AI chip order last year, Meta and Anthropic, two global tech giants, have subsequently shifted their ASIC production needs to Samsung.

An industry insider stated:

Since Samsung's foundry won the Tesla AI chip order last year, semiconductor foundry orders for AI servers have entered a phase of full acceleration.

Driven by this, the market expects Samsung's foundry business to turn profitable as early as the fourth quarter of this year. The key support for this round of order expansion is Samsung's most advanced 2-nanometer process technology.

Meta's third-generation AI accelerator chip, MTIA 3, and Anthropic's custom ASIC are both planned to be produced using this process. External inquiries about Samsung's 2-nanometer process have surged dramatically, further solidifying its competitive position in the advanced process foundry market.

Meta Shifts Orders to Samsung, Betting on 2nm Mass Production

According to reports citing industry insiders, Meta is negotiating with Samsung's foundry division for a next-generation ASIC design and production collaboration valued at over 10 trillion Korean won.

The first two generations of Meta's self-developed AI accelerator, MTIA, were manufactured by TSMC. However, starting with the third generation released this year, Meta has locked in Samsung as its core manufacturing partner.

According to reports, the MTIA 3 will use Samsung's most advanced 2-nanometer process, with production volumes reaching hundreds of thousands of wafers. A Samsung Electronics representative stated, "Nothing has been finalized yet."

Behind Meta's shift to Samsung is its strategic need to build large-scale AI infrastructure.

Meta is exploring a cloud service business that would rent AI computing power to external companies, with MTIA serving as the core chip to support this initiative.

At the same time, Meta has set a goal of building a total of 5 gigawatts of data center capacity by 2030, meaning it cannot rely solely on external chip supply.

To this end, Meta has initiated a high-speed development cycle of iterating a new chip every six months, with plans to release its third through fifth generations consecutively starting next year.

To support this ultra-fast development cycle, Meta has also established a joint design mechanism with Samsung's System LSI division. According to reports, the collaboration begins at the early stages of chip architecture design to compensate for the capacity gap in Meta's own engineering team under such a compressed timeline.

Anthropic Internalizes AI Infrastructure, Samsung May Be the Biggest Beneficiary

US AI company Anthropic is also reportedly evaluating the use of Samsung's 2-nanometer process to develop custom ASICs. This move is seen as part of its strategy to reduce reliance on Nvidia GPUs and Google TPUs and advance its "AI infrastructure autonomy" initiative.

In terms of investment scale, Anthropic's long-term plan includes building approximately 1 gigawatt of AI data center capacity, with total estimated investment reaching around $50 billion (approximately 77 trillion Korean won).

Industry analysis suggests that about half of this amount will be allocated to AI semiconductor procurement, with investments in semiconductors—including ASICs, DRAM, and NAND flash—estimated at around $25 billion (approximately 39 trillion Korean won).

Samsung Electronics, with its integrated semiconductor capabilities in memory, foundry, and advanced packaging, is widely regarded as the biggest potential beneficiary of Anthropic's AI chip procurement.

In May of this year, Samsung participated in Anthropic's Series H funding round of $65 billion (approximately 100 trillion Korean won), thereby establishing a strategic partnership between the two companies.

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