AMD to invest up to $5B in Anthropic under AI chip supply deal: report

Advanced Micro Devices Inc. AMD and Anthropic have agreed to a deal covering tens of billions of dollars' worth of artificial intelligence servers, according to a Wall Street Journal report, in a move that could strengthen AMD's position against Nvidia while expanding Anthropic's computing capacity.

Under the reported agreement, Anthropic will purchase up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's next-generation Instinct MI450 chips beginning in the first half of 2027.

AMD will also invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic, contingent on the AI startup meeting specific deployment milestones.

AMD shares fell about 2% in premarket trading following the report.

The agreement marks AMD's first investment in Anthropic and expands the chipmaker's presence in the rapidly growing AI infrastructure market.

Anthropic to deploy AMD chips across AI infrastructure

According to the report, Anthropic will use some of the AMD chips in its own data centers while leasing additional computing capacity through major cloud providers and neocloud operators.

AMD and Anthropic are also working together to identify suitable data center locations for the deployment of the new hardware.

“We have very much wanted to be a major part of their infrastructure,” AMD Chief Executive Lisa Su said.

She added that the companies' engineering teams have been collaborating for some time.

Anthropic currently runs workloads across several AI hardware platforms, including Google's tensor processing units, Amazon's Trainium chips and Nvidia graphics processing units.

Discussing the planning required for large AI infrastructure deployments, Su said, “You can’t just wake up one morning and say, ‘Oh, I want a gigawatt of compute tomorrow.’”

“You actually have to plan, you know, 12, 18, 24 months in advance for what you want.”

The Wall Street Journal also reported that AMD is in discussions to provide a financial backstop for Anthropic's future data center leases.

AMD expands challenge to Nvidia

The deal comes as AMD continues its effort to increase its share of the AI accelerator market, where Nvidia remains the dominant supplier.

Growing demand for AI infrastructure has created opportunities for AMD as developers seek alternative chip providers.

AMD has recently secured major agreements with OpenAI and Meta Platforms and has been working to attract younger AI companies as customers.

As part of the partnership, AMD has also entered into an engineering collaboration with Anthropic that will use Anthropic's Claude AI models to improve the performance of AMD's chip technology.

AMD's chips currently have lower adoption than Nvidia's products, partly because many AI developers are more familiar with Nvidia's software ecosystem.

According to the report, AMD has also offered incentives, including warrants, to help attract large customers.

AI infrastructure demand continues to accelerate

The agreement is expected to help Anthropic meet growing demand for its AI services after rapid adoption strained its computing resources.

The company has experienced capacity constraints in recent months, with some customers reporting outages and usage limits as demand for its AI tools increased.

Earlier this year, Anthropic expanded its infrastructure partnerships through agreements with Google, Amazon and Elon Musk's SpaceX, which has begun offering excess data center capacity to customers.