Anthropic Explored $7 Billion MatX Acquisition as Claude Maker Pushes Into Custom AI Chips
Anthropic explored acquiring AI-chip startup MatX for about $7 billion before talks shifted toward a possible partnership, underscoring its push into custom silicon.
Why it matters: Frontier AI labs are increasingly moving deeper into chip design to control cost, performance and supply.
Anthropic explored acquiring artificial-intelligence chip startup MatX for approximately $7 billion as the Claude developer moves more aggressively into custom semiconductor design. The acquisition discussions are no longer active and have evolved into talks about a possible partnership, according to Reuters. MatX, founded by former Google TPU engineers, is separately seeking new financing at a valuation of about $4 billion. Anthropic is expanding an internal silicon team while meeting with multiple AI-chip startups as it evaluates processors optimized for Claude workloads. Custom hardware could give the company more control over performance and cost while reducing its dependence on Nvidia processors. Anthropic is still pursuing a multi-chip strategy that includes Nvidia, Google and other suppliers while locking up large amounts of data-center capacity.