As the artificial intelligence race is in full swing, it is reported that Samsung Foundry has successfully won a chip manufacturing contract from AI startup giant Anthropic. Currently, the AI semiconductor market is highly concentrated on NVIDIA, with major companies such as Google, OpenAI, and Amazon competing to develop customized chips, and Anthropic has become a key force in the industry with its advanced AI models. Sources said that this cooperation with Anthropic is expected to help Samsung's foundry business return to the growth track and is expected to reverse its recent financial deficit.
The clues to this cooperation can be traced back to Anthropic’s Series H financing completed in May this year. At that time, the company announced a group of "strategic infrastructure partners" to assist it in financing and signing contracts, including memory giants Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron. Anthropic has said the businesses will help it reliably scale computing power at the speed of customer demand. South Korean media NewsWorks cited analysis by industry insiders and pointed out that among these infrastructure partners, Samsung is the only company with a foundry capable of manufacturing non-memory chips, so it is very likely to win orders for this product. An insider further revealed that Samsung's foundry department has finalized the production of chips for Anthropic. This batch of orders is regarded as a key driving force for transforming the department from losses to growth.
While winning orders from Anthropic, today's report also mentioned Samsung's major progress in another key area - Tesla's AI5 chip has entered the tape-out stage. Tape-out is the final step in the semiconductor design process, meaning the final chip design drawings are handed over to the foundry so that the manufacturer can calibrate the production equipment to specifications. Kim Jeong-gon, a senior engineer at Samsung OEM, confirmed the matter in a post on the workplace social platform LinkedIn. He said that the Tesla-Samsung AI5 chip has entered the tape-out stage of completing the design and handing over the drawings. The chip is planned to be produced at the Taylor factory using a 2-nanometer process and will be installed on Tesla's latest products soon.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk spoke highly of this AI5 chip in January this year. He claimed that the chip will not only be comparable to flagship products such as Nvidia's Blackwell and Hopper, but will also have significant advantages in manufacturing cost and power consumption performance. With the steady progress of its two major orders from Anthropic and Tesla, Samsung is trying to regain a favorable position in the fierce advanced process foundry market.