Microsoft is in talks to supply its Maia 200 chips to AI company Anthropic. A potential deal could strengthen Microsoft's position in the AI infrastructure race.
It has emerged that discussions are underway between Microsoft and AI company Anthropic regarding the supply of custom AI chips. Microsoft has long been trying to gain a stronger position in the custom AI chip market, where it has lagged behind rivals like Amazon and Google. In this context, the company introduced its second-generation AI processor, the Maia 200 chip, in January.
The Maia 200 chip in question has not yet been made available to customers via the Azure cloud platform. Microsoft had previously announced that Maia 200 would power OpenAI's GPT-5.2 model.
Anthropic's Growing Processing Power Needs Attract Attention
According to sources close to the matter, there is currently no finalized agreement between Anthropic and Microsoft regarding the use of Maia chips. While discussions are ongoing, it is stated that Anthropic's recent processing capacity issues have accelerated this process.
Microsoft's announcement last November of a $5 billion investment in Anthropic also indicates a deepening relationship between the two companies. Under the same agreement, Anthropic had reportedly committed to spending a total of $30 billion on Azure cloud services.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO and co-founder, confirmed at an event this month that the company was experiencing difficulties with its computing capacity. The rapid popularization of its Claude AI assistant and the software development-focused Claude Code tool throughout 2026 has significantly increased the company's infrastructure needs.
Anthropic's growing demand for processing power was also highlighted recently by an announcement from SpaceX. According to the announcement, Anthropic will pay $1.25 billion per month for massive computing power capacity until May 2029.
Nvidia Dependency Being Reduced
Until now, Anthropic has been largely dependent on Nvidia's graphics processing units to train and run its generative AI models. However, the company has recently started to turn to alternative hardware solutions.
In April, Anthropic announced it had signed a 10-year deal worth over $100 billion in total to use Amazon Web Services' custom Trainium chips. The company also announced last October that it would be using Google's TPU chips.
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