Anthropic has abandoned plans to acquire MatX, a chip design startup, according to reporting by Reuters. The talks, which valued MatX at approximately $7 billion, aimed to strengthen Anthropic's custom silicon capabilities and reduce dependence on established chip suppliers. The company is now exploring a partnership with MatX as an alternative approach.
MatX, founded in 2023, specializes in high-throughput chips designed for large language model training and reinforcement learning workloads. The startup's founders include Reiner Pope, who previously led AI software for Google's TPUs, and Mike Gunter, a lead designer of TPU hardware. MatX raised $500 million in its Series B in February and plans to manufacture chips at TSMC with production scheduled to begin in 2027.
The strategy behind chip ownership
Anthropic's pursuit of custom chip capabilities reflects its scale. The company reported an annualized revenue run rate of approximately $65 billion by the end of July 2026. In April, Anthropic committed more than $100 billion to Amazon Web Services over ten years for up to 5 gigawatts of computing capacity, with Amazon also investing $5 billion and pledging up to $20 billion more.
While cloud agreements provide access to computing power, they do not give Anthropic full control over its hardware planning. Owning a chip company would enable the company to customize designs for its specific workloads and reduce reliance on external suppliers including Nvidia, Google, and Amazon.
Valuation shift and partnership exploration
MatX's valuation has declined significantly since the acquisition discussions. The startup is currently seeking funding at an estimated $4 billion valuation, substantially lower than the $7 billion price tag in the earlier acquisition talks. Reuters reported that the reasons for ending the acquisition negotiations could not be determined.
According to multiple sources who spoke with Reuters, discussions are now leaning toward a collaboration rather than a merger. Anthropic has not yet selected its final approach to working with MatX.
Broader chip strategy
The MatX situation fits within Anthropic's wider effort to diversify its chip sourcing. In August, the company announced it was building its own chip engineering team while continuing to purchase hardware from Amazon, Google, Nvidia, and AMD. Anthropic is also pursuing agreements with other chip designers, including a reported preliminary agreement to purchase approximately $250 million of inference-focused chips from British startup Fractile.
A partnership with MatX could potentially offer faster implementation and lower upfront costs than a full acquisition, while preserving Anthropic's flexibility to evaluate other chip development opportunities.
