Anthropic has begun early-stage work to develop its own AI chip. It is also discussing a manufacturing partnership with Samsung Electronics, The Information reported on July 2 local time, citing three sources familiar with the matter.

Two of the three sources said Anthropic is considering using Samsung Electronics' 2-nanometre manufacturing process and advanced packaging facilities.

Anthropic is discussing what role the chip should play, what performance level it should target and how it would fit into servers or server clusters. The Information said it has talked with multiple chip design firms but has not yet moved to detailed design, testing or manufacturing.

Related hiring has also begun. It recently recruited Clive Chan, who was an early member of OpenAI's in-house chip team.

Asked by The Information about chip development, Anthropic said AWS Trainium chips, Google TPUs and Nvidia GPUs would remain central to its computing strategy, and it did not say more about its roadmap. Samsung Electronics declined to comment.

Developing in-house chips is part of a trend in which AI developers seek to directly control infrastructure that supports their models, including chips, cloud contracts, power and data centres.

Unlike other AI developers, Anthropic has developed its technology by renting a range of server chips from Amazon, Google and Nvidia rather than relying on Nvidia. It is also considering adopting Microsoft chips and chips from UK startup Fractile.