Samsung, Micron, SK Hynix Invest in Anthropic as AI Arms Race Extends to Chip Supply Chain

TradingKey - On May 28, Eastern Time, AI company Anthropic announced the completion of a $65 billion Series H funding round, with a post-money valuation reaching $965 billion, surpassing the $852 billion valuation of its competitor OpenAI to become the world's most valuable private AI company. Notably, the world's three largest memory chip manufacturers—Micron Technology ( MU ), Samsung Electronics, and SK Hynix, participated as "strategic infrastructure partners" for the first time simultaneously. The specific investment amounts from the three companies were not disclosed.

In a statement, Anthropic mentioned that the three partners "play a key role in the global supply of memory, storage, and logic chips." It is worth noting that the manufacturing of "logic chips" relies on foundry processes. Among the three partners, only Samsung Electronics possesses an independent foundry division, while Micron and SK Hynix do not have this business. Consequently, industry observers generally believe that the scope of collaboration between Anthropic and Samsung may extend beyond memory procurement into the foundry manufacturing sector. Anthropic has not yet provided further clarification on this matter.

If Samsung secures the AI chip foundry orders from Anthropic, it will introduce another heavyweight AI client to its foundry business, helping the division return to profitability. Furthermore, it is poised to use breakthroughs in 2nm process yields as an opportunity to capture market share as TSMC's capacity becomes saturated.

Samsung has made several strides in the foundry sector in recent years: securing orders for Tesla's ( TSLA) AI5/AI6 chips; NVIDIA's ( NVDA) Groq 3 LPU inference chips were previously produced using Samsung's 4nm process; additionally, it is expected to supply Apple's ( AAPL) future iPhone models with image sensors.

For SK Hynix and Micron, their participation in Anthropic is viewed by the market as a defensive move. Industry observers point out that the investments by SK Hynix and Micron indicate that the South Korean memory chip industry is extending its scope of collaboration from simple memory supply to the AI agent ecosystem. As the generative AI market continues to expand, demand for HBM and next-generation memory chips keeps climbing, and AI model training requirements are reshaping the semiconductor supply chain, with high-bandwidth memory becoming a critical bottleneck.

By participating in Anthropic's funding, the two companies can gain earlier insights into the specific memory bandwidth requirements of next-generation large models, thereby gaining a first-mover advantage in defining specifications for HBM4E and even longer-term products. Additionally, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix are expected to leverage this investment to attract global AI partners associated with Anthropic as future customers.

Multiple industry sources noted that investments by memory chip manufacturers like Samsung are not only pursuing financial returns but also aim to capture the rapidly growing demand from major clients, converting the growth of AI infrastructure into tangible benefits for their own businesses. The South Korean memory chip industry is expanding its influence in the global AI ecosystem through deep cooperation with AI leaders.