Samsung may secure Anthropic chip orders—will its foundry business make a comeback?

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By investing in the AI superstar enterprise Anthropic, Samsung Electronics has opened a new strategic door for its long-loss-making wafer foundry business.

According to Yonhap News Agency on Friday, Anthropic recently completed its Series H financing, raising $65 billion and reaching a post-money valuation of $965 billion (about 144 trillion Korean won). Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix, and Micron participated as "strategic infrastructure partners" in this round of funding.

It is noteworthy that Anthropic explicitly mentioned "logic chip" supply in its announcement, and among the three investors, only Samsung Electronics has a wafer foundry business. This statement has generally been interpreted by the industry as Samsung being expected to undertake the AI chip manufacturing orders needed for Anthropic's "Claude" model.

If this potential order is finalized, it will mark another important milestone for Samsung's wafer foundry business, which has recently won consecutive major clients. Previously, Samsung secured the foundry contracts for Tesla's next-generation AI chips "AI5" and "AI6," and also took on production of Nvidia's inference language processing chip "Groq3." The industry expects that, with the continued expansion of core AI clients, Samsung’s foundry business could turn profitable next year.

Logic chip reference becomes key signal

Anthropic emphasized in its financing announcement that the technical expertise of the three semiconductor partners "plays a core role in the global supply of memory, storage, and logic chips," and stated that this collaboration will help "stably expand computing power to meet customer demand."

The production process for logic chips is precisely the core business area of wafer foundries. Since SK Hynix and Micron do not have foundry divisions, industry analysis believes that this statement essentially points to Samsung Electronics, hinting that the partnership will go beyond simple memory supply and extend to commissioned manufacturing of AI chips.

Major customers keep coming in, foundry business accelerates its recovery

The momentum of Samsung's foundry customer expansion has clearly accelerated recently. In addition to Tesla AI chips and Nvidia Groq3 chips, Samsung will also supply image sensors for next year's new Apple iPhone.

Currently, Samsung ranks second in the global wafer foundry market with a 7.2% market share, but lags behind market leader TSMC, which has a 69.9% share—a gap of 62.7 percentage points. Samsung’s foundry business has been recording losses for consecutive years. If it adds Anthropic to its client portfolio, it will further solidify its competitive position in the AI chip foundry space.

"One-stop solution" becomes a differentiated bargaining chip

Samsung positions its investment in Anthropic as an all-round strategic cooperation covering "AI semiconductors, memory, wafer foundry, and AI infrastructure." The company’s triad of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), advanced-process foundry, and advanced packaging forms its core differentiated selling point—the "one-stop solution."

As competition in the AI market shifts from single HBM supply to full-chain ecosystem of AI chip design, production, packaging, and system optimization, Samsung is striving to leverage its full-stack semiconductor capabilities to gain more strategic ground in the AI era’s industry landscape.

An industry insider commented: "Samsung's investment this time should not be seen as a simple financial act, but rather as a signal of comprehensive strategic deepening with core players in the AI era. Expectations are rising on whether Samsung foundry can seize opportunities again through AI market expansion."

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