AMD Lands AI Mega-Deal! Anthropic to Spend Billions on Chips

According to a Wednesday (22nd) report by The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), AMD has signed a multi-billion-dollar chip supply and investment agreement with AI startup Anthropic. The deal not only secures much-needed computing power for Anthropic but also strengthens AMD's competitive position against NVIDIA, the dominant leader in the AI chip market.

Under the agreement, Anthropic will begin purchasing up to 2GW of AMD’s latest-generation Instinct MI450 chips starting in the first half of 2027. AMD will also make phased investments of up to $5 billion in Anthropic as specific deployment milestones are achieved—an unprecedented move as it marks the first time AMD has taken an equity stake in an AI startup.

AMD CEO Lisa Su stated that the company has long aimed to become a key infrastructure supplier for Anthropic, noting that engineering teams from both companies have already been collaborating for some time. Currently, Anthropic’s AI computing workloads are distributed across multiple platforms, including Google’s Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), Amazon’s Trainium chips, and NVIDIA’s GPUs.

Anthropic will deploy some of AMD’s chips in its own data centers while also leasing computing capacity through major cloud service providers or emerging cloud vendors. The two companies are jointly identifying suitable data centers for installing these chips.

Su emphasized that enterprises cannot suddenly request 1GW of computing power overnight; planning must begin 12 to 24 months in advance. According to sources, AMD is also discussing providing financial guarantees for Anthropic’s future data center leases.

As AI startups require massive infrastructure funding, large tech firms with investment-grade credit ratings are increasingly offering lease or debt guarantees to help startups secure financing on better terms. Google, for instance, previously supported select data center deals, enabling Anthropic to access Google’s TPUs.

AMD has aggressively expanded its GPU market share in recent years, benefiting from AI developers seeking to reduce reliance on NVIDIA. The company has recently signed major agreements with OpenAI and Meta and is actively pursuing more young AI startups as customers.

Su also revealed that AMD has signed an engineering collaboration agreement with Anthropic to leverage the Claude model to improve chip performance. However, due to AI companies’ unfamiliarity with AMD’s software ecosystem, its chip demand still lags behind NVIDIA’s. To attract major clients, AMD has previously offered incentives such as stock warrants.

This deal will also help Anthropic manage the sudden surge in demand for its AI tools. The unexpected spike in demand previously forced the company to limit user access, and some customers frequently experienced service outages. Earlier this year, Anthropic signed new agreements with Google, Amazon, and SpaceX—owned by Elon Musk—to continuously expand its computing resources.