Anthropic planned $7 billion acquisition of MatX, then abandoned deal

Aug 26, 2026

Anthropic discussed a $7 billion acquisition of AI chip startup MatX to accelerate its custom hardware development, though active acquisition talks have since stalled. To reduce its reliance on Nvidia and power its Claude models, Anthropic is expanding its in-house silicon team, hiring veterans from Google and OpenAI, and securing massive compute capacity. This includes a $45 billion deal with Nscale and a $1.25 billion monthly commitment to SpaceX, positioning the startup for a late 2026 IPO targeting a $2 trillion valuation.

MatX acquisition talks abandoned

▪The merger discussions between Anthropic and MatX have evolved into a discussion about a partnership rather than an acquisition
▪Anthropic discussed acquiring artificial intelligence chip startup MatX for approximately $7 billion to accelerate its in-house custom hardware development, but the acquisition talks are no longer active
▪Following the inactive acquisition talks with Anthropic, MatX is seeking to raise new capital at a valuation of about $4 billion

Custom chip development strategy

▪Anthropic held meetings with multiple AI chip startups to understand current chip design approaches and potentially produce a training or inference chip
▪Anthropic hired Google chip veteran Amir Salek and former OpenAI chip engineer Clive Chan to support its hardware and custom chip design push
▪Anthropic is expanding an in-house silicon team to design custom chips to run Claude models faster and reduce reliance on Nvidia processors, while maintaining a multi-chip approach with Google and Nvidia

Nscale compute deal details

▪The Nscale agreement represents about 460 megawatts of power capacity from a West Virginia data center, deploying Nvidia's upcoming Vera Rubin chips starting in late 2027
▪Nscale raised $2 billion in March 2026 at a valuation of $14.6 billion, led by Norwegian energy company Aker, to fund its planned $69 billion data center in Mason County
▪Anthropic signed a six-year agreement worth approximately $45 billion to rent AI cloud computing power from British infrastructure startup Nscale

Compute capacity expansion spree

▪Anthropic expanded its compute partnerships in April 2026, gaining an additional 5 gigawatts of compute from Amazon and expanding relationships with Google and Broadcom
▪Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through May 2029 for compute capacity across SpaceX's Colossus and Colossus II AI training data center clusters
▪Anthropic signed a $10 billion, six-year cloud computing deal with Volta in August 2026, and a $5 billion server and investment deal with Advanced Micro Devices in July 2026

IPO plans this year

▪Anthropic is preparing for an initial public offering planned for late 2026, following SpaceX's public listing
▪Anthropic is expected to chase a valuation of $2 trillion in its upcoming initial public offering

Revenue projections through 2028

▪Anthropic is projecting 2028 revenue of approximately $190 billion to $200 billion, compared to its current revenue run rate of $47 billion
▪Anthropic plans to spend tens of billions of dollars directly on chips and cloud rentals, including $36 billion worth of Google's AI chips