Anthropic Hires Google's Custom Chip Programme Founder for AI Processor Push

Anthropic, creator of the Claude AI platform, has made a significant hire in its efforts to design custom AI processors. Amir Salek, the founder of Google's custom chip programme, has joined Anthropic as part of its compute engineering team. He will report directly to James Bradbury and bring decades of technical leadership in custom semiconductor architectures.

Salek's experience spans multiple companies, including Nvidia and Cerberus Capital Management. At Google, he delivered the first 7 generations of Tensor Processing Units (TPU) to data centres. Anthropic plans to leverage this expertise as it prepares to build its own specialised AI processors, rather than relying on third-party suppliers like Nvidia, Google, and Amazon.

The move is part of a broader trend in the AI sector, with rival OpenAI also developing custom processors. Anthropic has also secured significant infrastructure capacity contracts with providers including Riot Platforms and Volta Infra Holdings to ensure ample server resources for its growing operational requirements.