Science & technology

Report: Anthropic Eyes AI Chips With MatX Talks

Is this a sign of financial fragility or a savvy move to stay lean and chip-agnostic?

AUG 28·Updated AUG 29

Report: Anthropic Eyes AI Chips With MatX Talks

Story

Above: The Anthropic logo on Feb. 6. Image credit: Samuel Boivin/NurPhoto/Getty Images

The Facts

Anthropic discussed acquiring AI chip startup MatX for roughly $7 billion before the talks shifted toward a potential partnership, according to a report published by Reuters on Thursday. MatX, founded by former Google tensor processing unit engineers, is now seeking new financing at a valuation of about $4 billion.
Techstrong.ai
Reuters
TNW
Anthropic has expanded an internal silicon team to design custom chips aimed at making its Claude AI models faster and more efficient, while maintaining a multi-chip strategy with suppliers including Nvidia and Google.
Business Standard
TradingView
Anthropic has reportedly met with multiple AI chip startups in recent weeks to evaluate different chip design approaches but has not made an acquisition decision. The company recently hired Google chip veteran Amir Salek and, in June, former OpenAI chip engineer Clive Chan.
Outlook Business
Traders Union
Anthropic has committed to buying $36 billion worth of Google AI chips and signed a $45 billion deal with Nscale for cloud computing capacity. It also agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for use of its Colossus 1 facility, which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia chips.
NewsBytes
Global Banking and Finance
Nvidia has warned that its processors will remain in short supply through 2027. OpenAI announced at a recent conference that its custom chip, Jalapeño, outperformed a comparable Nvidia processor in energy efficiency for inference calculations.
Reuters
Traders Union
Anthropic's IPO, expected later this year, is targeting a valuation of $2 trillion tied to a projected 2028 revenue of up to $200 billion. Chip design costs for a single generation can reach hundreds of millions of dollars, with production of viable hardware taking a year or more.
KuCoin
Reuters

Sources Split

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The Spin

Narrative A

A $7 billion deal Anthropic could walk away from without explanation fits the pattern: hyperscalers keep funding labs that can't cover their own bills, so scrapping MatX for a cheaper "partnership" looks like capital discipline, not strategy. Strip out the circular financing propping up Anthropic, and there's no real AI business justifying a chip buy that size to begin with.

Ed Zitron on Substack

Narrative B

Walking away from buying MatX outright and choosing a partnership instead fits Anthropic's real edge: a multi-chip architecture — Google TPUs, AWS Trainium2, now custom silicon expertise — built for cost efficiency. A supply deal delivers the silicon without an integration headache, keeping Anthropic's edge intact without the overhead of running a hardware company.

Data Gravity on Substack