AMD to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic; AI startup to buy up to 2 GW of chips

July 22 (Reuters) - Advanced Micro Devices said on Wednesday it would invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic and the artificial intelligence startup would buy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's latest-generation AI chips, beginning in the first half of 2027.

AMD has been seeking to expand its foothold in the fast-growing AI chip market as developers look to diversify beyond Nvidia, while Anthropic has been racing to secure computing capacity to meet growing demand for its AI services.

The Wall Street Journal earlier reported that Anthropic would use some of the chips at its own data centers and lease additional capacity through cloud providers and neocloud operators.

The report added that AMD was in talks to provide a financial backstop for Anthropic's future data-center leases.

AMD Chief Executive Lisa Su said the companies' engineering teams had been working together for some time and that large-scale AI computing deployments require long-term planning.  

The investment will be tied to certain deployment milestones, AMD said.

(Reporting by Rashika Singh and additional reporting by Anzar Mehraj in Bengaluru; Editing by Jonathan Ananda and Joyjeet Das)