Anthropic Hires Chip Expert to Fuel AI Ambitions

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude chatbot, has made a significant move in its bid to control its own computing power. The firm has hired Amir Salek, who helped build Google's custom chip business from the ground up.

Salek will join Anthropic's compute team and report directly to James Bradbury. He brings extensive experience in chip development, having overseen the creation of seven successive versions of Google's tensor processing units (TPUs).

Anthropic currently relies on chips from Nvidia, Google, and Amazon, but has made it clear that it wants to create its own semiconductor business. This move is part of a larger trend in the AI industry, where companies are seeking to control their own hardware.

The company's decision to buy $250 million worth of chips from Fractile, a UK startup, suggests that supply shortages remain a concern for the industry. Anthropic's efforts to build optionality across the whole hardware stack will likely have significant implications for investors and AI developers alike.