Samsung Foundry Poised for Major AI Chip Orders Following Strategic Anthropic Investment
Samsung Electronics and SK hynix have secured strategic stakes in Anthropic, the pioneering developer behind the highly acclaimed Claude artificial intelligence models. Their participation in a recent funding round propelled the US startup’s valuation to an impressive $965 billion, solidifying its position as the world’s most valuable AI company, surpassing even OpenAI.
This significant deal is generating strong expectations that Samsung Electronics is now well-positioned to secure future AI chip manufacturing orders from Anthropic, a development set to substantially boost its crucial foundry business segment.
Both leading Korean chipmakers officially joined as strategic infrastructure partners, alongside US memory giant Micron, as confirmed by Anthropic on Thursday. This substantial investment coincided with Anthropic successfully closing its $65 billion Series H funding round, which escalated the company’s valuation to $965 billion – a remarkable surge from its $380 billion valuation just last February.
This impressive valuation now places Anthropic ahead of industry rival OpenAI, which was valued at $852 billion in late March, as both prominent AI firms reportedly prepare for anticipated public listings later this year.
For Samsung and SK hynix, the strategic interest in this collaboration revolves around its profound implications for future hardware demand within the rapidly expanding AI sector. Anthropic, in its official press release, highlighted that the advanced technologies provided by its memory partners are “critical in the global supply of memory, storage, and logic chips,” further noting that these crucial relationships will enable it to “reliably scale our compute capabilities to meet escalating customer requirements.”
The specific mention of “logic chips” has garnered significant attention, especially within the Korean semiconductor industry. Logic chips are exclusively produced via foundry or contract manufacturing services. Notably, among the three strategic memory partners, only Samsung Electronics operates a comprehensive foundry business. This precise wording has intensified speculation that Samsung’s involvement could well extend beyond merely supplying memory components to actively fabricating the highly specialized, custom AI chips essential for powering Anthropic’s advanced Claude AI models.
Securing such a pivotal deal would undeniably provide a new marquee client for Samsung’s foundry operation, a division that has faced losses for several years but is now projected to return to profitability next year. This unit has recently achieved notable wins, including manufacturing Tesla’s next-generation AI5 and AI6 chips, and is currently producing Nvidia’s Grok3 inference processor. Last year, Samsung held the second position in the competitive global foundry market with a 7.2 percent share, though it continues to trail market leader TSMC by a significant 62.7 percentage points.
“This investment represents far more than a simple equity stake in an AI company,” an influential semiconductor industry official commented to News on Friday. “It clearly signals that Samsung is actively broadening its strategic ties with the core innovators and key players of the AI era. Consequently, there is growing optimism that its foundry business is uniquely positioned to seize significant new opportunities as the global AI market continues its rapid and unprecedented expansion.”
This high-profile funding round attracted a distinguished roster of global backers, co-led by investment powerhouses Capital Group, Coatue, and Singapore’s GIC, with additional significant participation from firms like Blackstone, Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, and the sovereign wealth fund Temasek.
Anthropic, established in 2021 by former OpenAI staff, recently reported that its annualized revenue exceeded $47 billion earlier this month and anticipates achieving its first operating profit in the second quarter. According to PitchBook data, as reported by The Wall Street Journal, the company’s valuation trajectory has surpassed that of any other entity in venture-capital history, reaching this latest staggering figure approximately three years and two months after its initial Claude product was introduced to the market.
mjh
