Samsung, SK hynix back Anthropic in $65B round, paving way for chip deal - Korea JoongAng Daily

The investment by Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix in Anthropic's $6.5 billion funding round signals a strategic move toward future chip cooperation agreements. This development highlights the semicon... Read original →

Samsung and SK hynix’s investment in Anthropic is a strategic play to co-define next-gen memory architectures through AI system requirements. Technically, large-model inference demands unprecedented HBM bandwidth and power efficiency, forcing DRAM makers to shift from commodity chips to algorithm-aware, IP-integrated solutions—ushering in a co-design paradigm across algorithms, memory, and interconnects. Geopolitically, this aligns with U.S.-ROK efforts to forge an AI supply chain excluding mainland China, mitigating export control risks while cementing Korean firms’ indispensability. Facing NVIDIA’s Grace Hopper and Micron’s HBM3E ramp, Samsung must lock in AI workloads early. Within 18 months, leading memory suppliers will sell ‘AI-ready memory subsystems’ bundled with dataflow insights from model training—redirecting process R&D toward system-level intelligence rather than mere transistor density. The semiconductor value axis is pivoting decisively from scaling to smart efficiency.