Anthropic Hires Google TPU Veteran to Lead Custom AI Chip Push
Anthropic has hired Amir Salek, one of the founding figures behind Google’s Tensor Processing Unit, as the Claude developer expands into custom artificial-intelligence chips. Designing hardware around its own training and inference workloads could help Anthropic improve performance and energy efficiency, contain computing costs and reduce its exposure to shortages or strategic dependence on outside chip suppliers.
The company has now begun building an in-house AI chip program that will draw on Salek’s TPU experience as well as Anthropic’s engineering talent and capital. The report did not disclose Salek’s exact start date, the size of the planned investment, a manufacturing partner or a timetable for production. Those omissions indicate the initiative remains at an early stage, with architecture, fabrication and deployment milestones still to be detailed.
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The history behind this eventAnthropic Builds In-House AI Chip Team for Claude
Surging enterprise demand for Claude has made compute costs, chip supply and energy efficiency central to Anthropic’s expansion. Purpose-built accelerators could let the company co-design silicon with its models and software stack, lowering inference costs while giving it greater control over its hardware roadmap. The effort will supplement, rather than replace, Anthropic’s multi-chip strategy spanning Amazon Web Services, Google, Nvidia and AMD.
Anthropic confirmed on Aug. 6, 2026, that it was assembling an in-house team and recruiting engineers across chip architecture, design and verification to build custom silicon for Claude. Senior openings offer annual pay of $320,000 to $485,000. The company hired Clive Chan, an early member of OpenAI’s chip program, in June, while The Information reported on July 2 that Anthropic was discussing manufacturing with Samsung. No tape-out or production schedule has been announced.
Anthropic Weighs In-House AI Chips to Secure Computing Independence
Anthropic has long relied on Nvidia GPUs and computing capacity and custom chips supplied by partners including Google and Broadcom to train and run its Claude models. As model sizes and enterprise demand grow, developing chips in-house could diversify supply risks, lower costs and strengthen Anthropic’s bargaining power with cloud and semiconductor providers.
As of July 19, 2026, Anthropic was evaluating whether to design its own AI chips and was reportedly in talks with Samsung about a custom-chip partnership. The company continues to diversify its supply chain even after recently signing long-term contracts with Google and Broadcom. Its annualized revenue has reportedly surpassed $30 billion, but it has yet to formally settle on a chip strategy.
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