Anthropic Abandons $7 Billion MatX Acquisition, Shifts to Partnership Talks

Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company behind the Claude chatbot, discussed acquiring AI chip startup MatX for approximately $7 billion before the deal stalled, according to people briefed on the matter. The negotiations, first reported by Reuters on August 27, have since evolved into conversations about a potential partnership rather than a full acquisition. Anthropic declined to comment on the talks, and MatX did not respond to requests for comment.

The abandoned acquisition underscores Anthropic's aggressive push to develop custom silicon to reduce its reliance on suppliers like Nvidia and to gain greater control over the hardware used to train and run its AI models. Anthropic is currently expanding an inhouse chip team and has recently hired key engineers, including Google chip veteran Amir Salek and former OpenAI chip engineer Clive Chan. The company plans to maintain a multi-vendor strategy, working with providers such as Nvidia, Google, and Amazon, while also pursuing its own designs.

MatX, founded in 2023 by former Google tensor processing unit (TPU) engineers Reiner Pope and Mike Gunter, builds processors specifically designed for large language model training....