Anthropic has appointed Amir Salek, a former Alphabet executive who led seven generations of Tensor Processing Units, to spearhead its in-house semiconductor initiative.
Salek, who previously served as senior managing director at Cerberus Capital Management after leaving Google in 2022, will report directly to James Bradbury, Anthropic's compute lead. The hire underscores the AI lab's push to develop proprietary hardware architecture, aiming to tailor chip designs to its operational needs and reduce reliance on external suppliers.
The company has committed $250 million to UK-based chip firm Fractile as part of its hardware strategy, while continuing to source processors from Nvidia, Amazon, and Google for its current operations. Anthropic has also secured multi-vendor infrastructure agreements, including data center capacity deals with Riot Platforms and Volta Infra Holdings.
The move aligns with broader industry trends, as rival OpenAI prepares to deploy its custom "Jalapeno" chip, developed in partnership with Broadcom, later this year. Anthropic's San Francisco-based lab is positioning itself to mitigate supply chain bottlenecks and enhance operational efficiency through vertical integration in hardware development.
