Anthropic discussed buying AI chip startup MatX for roughly $7 billion before the talks shifted to a possible partnership, according to people briefed on the matter reported by Reuters. The company is building an in-house silicon team and has hired chip engineers from Google and OpenAI, while continuing to buy and rent capacity from Nvidia, Google and others. No acquisition has been agreed, and designing a working chip can take years.

• ~$7 billion discussed purchase price
• MatX raising at ~$4 billion valuation
• $36 billion of Google AI chips planned