AMD plans to invest to up $5 billion into Anthropic as it seeks to cut into Nvidia's dominance

By William Gavin

The two companies also strike a chip deal

AMD CEO Lisa Su said the company's partnership with Anthropic "will accelerate AI adoption at scale."

Anthropic and Advanced Micro Devices have signed a major new deal tying the artificial-intelligence leaders closer together from both a business perspective and a financial perspective.

Anthropic will buy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's (AMD) latest graphic processing units, the Instinct MI450 series, and deploy its Helios racks. AMD will adopt Anthropic's Claude models to boost its software development.

The chip maker has also committed to invest up to $5 billion in Anthropic. In total, the deal is worth tens of billions of dollars, according to the Wall Street Journal.

"Together, we will accelerate AI adoption at scale and establish Helios as a major platform for the next generation of AI infrastructure," AMD CEO Lisa Su said in a statement.

For AMD, the deal could strengthen its position in the market against rivals like Nvidia (NVDA). On Monday, AMD also announced an extended partnership with Microsoft (MSFT), with the software giant agreeing to deploy Helios solutions for various services.

On Thursday, AMD will host its "Advancing AI" event in San Francisco. Morningstar analyst Brian Colello earlier told MarketWatch that he thinks AMD could release more details on its partnerships at the event.

"The deal strengthens AMD's strategic partnership, competitive positioning, and long-term revenue opportunities," Hendi Susanto, a portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, said in emailed comments regarding Anthropic.

AMD's stock nudged up 1% on Wednesday. The shares have jumped more than 156% so far in 2026 as the company has capitalized on the AI boom.

The announced investment would be AMD's first in Anthropic, which is seeking to go public and was recently valued at $965 billion.

AMD is also in talks to offer a financial backstop for Anthropic's future data-center leases, according to the Wall Street Journal. Alphabet (GOOG) (GOOGL) has already agreed to backstop $35 billion worth of Anthropic's data-center leases, Bloomberg reported in June.

Larger technology companies have started backstopping deals with AI startups to help them secure access. There are a few benefits for those tech giants, some experts say, including broadening the availability of compute, which is a high-demand, necessary resource for AI companies.

However, the deepening financial ties between major chip companies and their customers have been a source of concern for some investors.

"Access to compute is central to keeping Claude at the frontier and meeting demand from our customers," Anthropic Chief Compute Officer Tom Brown said in a statement.

-William Gavin

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07-22-26 1258ET