Micron strikes AI infrastructure deal with Anthropic

US chipmaker Micron Technology has signed an agreement with AI company Anthropic covering AI infrastructure expansion and investment.

Micron said Sunday (local time) it had entered into a strategic agreement with Anthropic encompassing memory and storage AI architecture design, product supply, and the adoption of Anthropic's in-house AI model Claude. Under the deal, the two companies plan to collaborate on analyzing how HBM, DRAM, and solid-state drive products perform within AI infrastructure, with the aim of improving performance and efficiency.

Micron will also participate as a strategic investor in Anthropic's Series H funding round, while Anthropic has agreed to purchase Micron's memory and storage products.

However, the two companies did not disclose specific details such as the volume of product supply or the size of the investment.

Anthropic raised $65 billion in its Series H round at a valuation of $965 billion.

Sumit Sadana, Micron's executive vice president and chief business officer, said the AI revolution had "permanently elevated the role of memory and storage" and that the strategic partnership between Micron and Anthropic would "combine industry-leading capabilities to transform and scale next-generation AI infrastructure."

Tom Brown, Anthropic's chief computing officer, said memory and storage are "critical factors that determine how efficiently we can train and serve Claude," adding that the collaboration with Micron would allow the company to work closely to optimize its systems and secure the products it needs.

Anthropic's decision to sign a direct supply agreement with a memory chip manufacturer reflects its shift away from relying on cloud services and third-party data center leases toward building its own data center infrastructure.

Anthropic recently signed letters of intent with US data center developers to lease more than 1 gigawatt of capacity in total, and plans to secure 10 gigawatts of its own computing capacity within the next several years, according to The Information, a US technology publication.

The deal is expected to draw scrutiny over potential circular-trading concerns, given that the funds Micron invested in Anthropic would effectively flow back to Micron through Anthropic's purchases of its memory products.

Meanwhile, Anthropic said on May 28 that Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix had also joined its Series H round as strategic infrastructure partners.