Anthropic Drops $7 Billion MatX Takeover, Pursues Partnership

Anthropic is expanding its in-house silicon team as it seeks custom chips that can run its Claude models faster and more efficiently while reducing dependence on Nvidia. MatX, founded by former Google tensor processing unit engineers, is developing processors for training large AI models. Buying the startup would have given Anthropic an established chip-design team and potentially shortened a development process that can take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars per generation.

Anthropic discussed acquiring MatX for roughly $7 billion before the takeover talks became inactive, Reuters reported on Aug. 27, 2026, citing people briefed on the matter. The reason the negotiations ended was not clear, and the discussions have since shifted toward a potential partnership. Anthropic declined to comment, while MatX did not respond. The chip startup is separately seeking fresh funding at a valuation of about $4 billion, according to one of the sources.