He’s the engineer who founded Google’s custom-silicon effort in 2013 and led its Tensor Processing Unit (TPU) program through its first seven generations before leaving in 2022; before Google he spent eight years designing chips at Nvidia.

What will Salek do at Anthropic?

He has joined Anthropic’s compute team and reports to James Bradbury, who leads it, as part of the company’s push to design its own AI chips.

Does this mean Anthropic will stop buying chips from Nvidia and Google?

No. Anthropic describes a “multi-chip approach” and says it will keep buying processors from Nvidia, Google, and Amazon alongside building its own custom silicon.

Is OpenAI doing something similar?

Yes — OpenAI has been co-developing its own Jalapeno chip with Broadcom, which is expected to deploy later in 2026.

Anthropic Hires Amir Salek, Founder of Google's TPU Program

Anthropic has hired Amir Salek, the engineer who founded and ran Google’s Tensor Processing Unit program, to help build its own line of custom AI chips, Bloomberg reported on August 21, citing people familiar with the move. The hire was independently corroborated by several other outlets in the days that followed.

Salek spent nearly a decade at Google, starting its custom-silicon effort in 2013 and delivering the company’s first seven generations of Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) before leaving in 2022. He arrived at Google after eight years at Nvidia, where he founded a system-on-a-chip design group and worked on early GPU and Tegra chips. After leaving Google, he became senior managing director at Cerberus Capital Management, the private equity firm co-founded by Deputy Secretary of Defense Stephen Feinberg.

At Anthropic, Salek has joined the compute organization and will report to James Bradbury, who runs it. The hire lands weeks after Anthropic confirmed publicly that it was assembling a custom silicon team to co-design chips and models together, part of a push to cut costs and loosen its dependence on outside suppliers as demand for Claude grows. He joins a compute team that earlier this year also recruited Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield to help manage the company’s chip supply crunch.

Anthropic says it isn’t abandoning outside vendors: the company describes a “multi-chip approach” and continues buying processors from Nvidia, Google, and Amazon, alongside a separate $250 million initial order with UK chip startup Fractile and data-center capacity deals with Riot Platforms and Volta Infra Holdings. Salek’s résumé — taking a chip program from a blank page to seven shipped generations — gives the in-house effort a leader with a rare, complete track record across the hardware stack.

The move puts Anthropic in the same race as OpenAI, which has been co-developing its own Jalapeno chip with Broadcom for deployment later this year. Neither Anthropic nor Salek has commented publicly beyond confirming the hire to reporters.

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