Anthropic has hired Amir Salek, a key figure behind Google’s custom chip program, as the company starts building its own semiconductor team.
Salek joined Anthropic’s compute team. He will report to James Bradbury. At Google, Salek helped found and lead the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) program. He delivered the first seven generations of those chips before leaving in 2022.
The move shows Anthropic’s plan to design its own AI chips. The San Francisco company currently buys chips from Nvidia, Google, and Amazon. Like other big AI labs, it faces tight supplies of advanced hardware and rising demand for computing power.
Custom chips could help Anthropic handle shortages and create designs better suited to its Claude models. The company has already begun posting jobs for the new silicon effort.
Anthropic is also securing more data center capacity. Recent deals include agreements with Riot Platforms and Volta Infra Holdings. These steps give the company more room to grow while it develops in-house hardware.
Rival OpenAI is following a similar path by working on its own custom chips. Major AI firms are racing to control more of their hardware supply as the industry scales up.
Salek most recently worked as a senior managing director at private equity firm Cerberus Capital Management. His experience running large chip programs makes him a strong addition for Anthropic’s hardware push.
Reference links
- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-21/anthropic-taps-google-chip-veteran-as-part-of-push-into-hardware
- https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/anthropic-taps-google-chip-veteran-195955567.html
- https://fourweekmba.com/ai-anthropic-amir-salek-tpu-chip-compute-strategy/
