Anthropic in talks to use Microsoft’s AI chips, The Information reports

May 21 (Reuters) – Anthropic is in talks to rent servers powered by Microsoft-designed chips to meet rising demand for its AI services, The Information reported on Thursday, in what would be a major boost for the tech giant’s in-house chip efforts.

The Claude creator’s talks to rent the chips are still early and may not lead to an agreement, the report said, citing two people who spoke to executives involved in the discussions.

Microsoft and Anthropic did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. Shares of the Windows maker, which are down about 10% for the year, rose 1% after the news.

Landing Anthropic will be a major win for Microsoft’s push to emulate the custom chip success of Alphabet and Amazon, which have built significant businesses renting out processors initially meant for internal use to AI startups.

Demand has grown for these custom chips as companies seek alternatives to Nvidia’s costly and low-in-supply AI processors. Anthropic has emerged as a key customer for them by striking deals with companies including Amazon and Google.

Microsoft has been deepening its ties with Anthropic in recent months by integrating its models into products including the Copilot AI assistant, as its long-standing partnership with OpenAI loosens and it reduces its reliance on the ChatGPT maker.

The company in January unveiled the second generation of its in-house AI chip, “Maia 200”, and software tools that targeted one of Nvidia’s biggest competitive advantages with developers.

Maia 200 is made by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co using 3-nanometer chipmaking technology and uses high-bandwidth memory chips, albeit an older and slower generation than Nvidia’s forthcoming “Vera Rubin” chips.

Microsoft has loaded its chip with a significant amount of what is known as SRAM, a type of memory that can provide speed advantages for chatbots and other AI systems when they field requests from a large number of users.

(Reporting by Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru; Editing by Devika Syamnath)