Samsung Foundry Likely to Win Anthropic "Claude AI Chip" Orders Following Tesla and Nvidia

Samsung and SK hynix Invest in Anthropic
Mention of "Logic Chips" Highlights Potential Foundry Collaboration with Samsung
Will Samsung Narrow the Gap with Foundry Leader TSMC?

Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have invested in Anthropic, a U.S. AI company that developed the artificial intelligence (AI) model "Claude." In particular, as Anthropic has mentioned collaboration in logic semiconductors in addition to memory, there is speculation about potential cooperation with Samsung Electronics, which operates its own foundry business.

On May 28 (local time), Anthropic announced that it had raised 65 billion dollars in its latest Series H funding round, and that its post-investment corporate valuation is estimated at 965 billion dollars (approximately 1,440 trillion won). Samsung Electronics, SK hynix, and Micron, the world's three leading memory semiconductor manufacturers, participated in this round as "strategic infrastructure partners." Anthropic emphasized, "The technologies of these companies play a key role in supplying memory, storage, and logic chips worldwide," adding, "Our partnerships with them will greatly help us reliably scale computing resources to meet customer demand."

The mention of "logic chips" in Anthropic's announcement has led to industry speculation regarding potential foundry cooperation with Samsung Electronics. The foundry process is essential for manufacturing logic chips; however, neither Micron nor SK hynix has a foundry division, unlike Samsung Electronics. For this reason, the industry believes that Samsung Electronics and Anthropic may expand their collaboration beyond just memory to include foundry operations as well.

Samsung Electronics Pyeongtaek Campus view. Samsung Electronics.

This suggests that Samsung Electronics is highly likely to manufacture the AI chips used in Anthropic’s flagship model, "Claude." Anthropic, alongside OpenAI, is evaluated as a key player among the world’s leading AI model companies.

Analysts note that Samsung Electronics’ foundry business is set to secure another major client, following Tesla and Nvidia. Previously, Samsung Electronics won contracts to manufacture Tesla's next-generation AI chips, "AI5" and "AI6." The company’s foundry is also responsible for producing the upgraded version of "AI4." Additionally, Nvidia’s inference-specialized language processing unit (LPU) chip, "Grok 3," is also being manufactured by Samsung Electronics’ foundry. Samsung Electronics is also planning to supply image sensors for Apple’s new iPhones scheduled for release next year.

As a result, attention is focused on whether the foundry business at Samsung Electronics—which has posted losses for several years—can regain momentum. As of last year, Samsung Electronics ranked second in the global foundry market with a 7.2% share, but the gap with first-place TSMC (69.9%) remains a substantial 62.7 percentage points.

Some industry experts analyze that this partnership signifies a strategic collaboration between Samsung Electronics and Anthropic spanning "AI semiconductors, memory, foundry, and AI infrastructure." As the AI semiconductor market evolves into an ecosystem that encompasses not only high-bandwidth memory (HBM) supply but also AI chip design, production, packaging, and system optimization, Samsung Electronics—a leading integrated device manufacturer (IDM)—is viewed as strengthening its partnership with Anthropic by leveraging its competitiveness in HBM, advanced foundry processes, cutting-edge packaging, and across the entire semiconductor value chain.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.