Anthropic is building an internal chip-design team to develop custom processors for its Claude artificial intelligence models, a move aimed at reducing its reliance on constrained AI hardware supplies and improving performance at scale.

The AI startup is hiring engineers with expertise across both hardware and software, Reuters reported.

The effort expands Anthropic's existing multi-chip strategy, with the company signaling it will continue using a mix of third-party infrastructure and accelerators. Its current ecosystem includes hardware and cloud partnerships tied to Amazon Web Services, Google, Nvidia and AMD.

Anthropic's move fits into a larger push by leading AI companies to reduce dependence on scarce Nvidia GPUs. The availability of advanced chips has become a bottleneck for training and running frontier AI models, with companies competing for limited accelerator capacity.

The chip initiative also highlights the evolving relationship between AI model developers and cloud providers.

Anthropic has deep ties with Amazon, which has invested billions of dollars in the startup and provides access to its Trainium and Inferentia chips through Amazon Web Services. In April, Amazon announced that Anthropic would spend more than $100 billion over the next 10 years on AWS technologies.

Developing a cutting-edge AI chip can cost roughly $500 million, industry sources told Reuters, reflecting the expense of recruiting specialized engineers, designing advanced architectures and ensuring chips can be manufactured at scale without costly production failures.

Anthropic has not disclosed a timeline for when its custom chips could be deployed or whether it plans to manufacture the processors itself.

Anthropic is also exploring a $36 billion debt financing package tied to the use of Alphabet Inc.'s Google chips, with Blackstone reportedly holding early discussions with investors regarding demand for the potential deal.

The size, structure and leadership of the financing are still under negotiation, and Blackstone may not end up leading the transaction.

If completed, the financing would surpass the $35 billion debt package that was agreed upon several months ago, arranged by Apollo Global Management and Blackstone. The deal would support Anthropic's lease of Google's custom artificial intelligence chips.