Anthropic, the U.S. developer of the generative artificial intelligence model Claude, has cited a possible shortage of high-bandwidth memory as a key risk factor in its initial public offering registration statement. The company named Samsung Electronics (005930.KS), SK hynix (000660.KS) and U.S. chipmaker Micron Technology as the main producers of such memory, warning that they may not be able to meet surging demand on time even as they expand capacity. A simple sum of seven major AI computing infrastructure contracts disclosed by Anthropic exceeds $600 billion, drawing attention to the potential impact on Korean memory makers.
In the registration statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on the 26th, Anthropic said most high-performance memory, such as HBM, used in AI computing infrastructure is produced by SK hynix, Samsung Electronics and Micron, according to industry sources on the 27th. The company said there is no assurance the three suppliers can deliver the volumes it needs on time, even as they add capacity. It warned that shortages could worsen if large customers or competitors lock up a particular supplier's output in advance. Anthropic also flagged the concentration of the most advanced chip manufacturing capacity at Taiwan's TSMC as a risk.
The scale of Anthropic's spending commitments to secure AI infrastructure also came into view. A simple sum of the seven major contracts disclosed in the filing comes to about $637 billion, or roughly 845 trillion won. The largest is a lease agreement for AI accelerator equipment with U.S. chipmaker Broadcom, worth about $161.2 billion, or roughly 214 trillion won. Anthropic signed cloud service agreements worth at least $114.5 billion, or roughly 152 trillion won, with Google and at least $110 billion, or roughly 146 trillion won, with Amazon. Its contract with Microsoft is worth at least $44.9 billion, or roughly 60 trillion won. Agreements with SpaceXAI, Nscale and Lambda were also included. The total cannot be read as a fixed investment figure, however, because the contracts mix minimum spending obligations, equipment lease payments and amounts that vary with actual volumes supplied.
Anthropic has until now developed and operated its AI models using cloud services from major technology companies. More recently it has diversified how it secures infrastructure, leasing AI accelerators separately and deploying them in dedicated data centers. The company uses a range of AI chips, including Amazon's Trainium, Google's tensor processing units and graphics processing units from Nvidia and AMD. As AI infrastructure spending spreads beyond Nvidia GPUs to multiple types of AI chips, demand for high-performance memory such as HBM used in those chips is expected to rise alongside it.
The cost of AI computing itself is also climbing sharply. Anthropic's computing and infrastructure costs came to $8.945 billion, or about 11.9 trillion won, in the first half of this year, up 283% from a year earlier. Revenue grew faster over the same period, rising to $16.286 billion, or about 21.6 trillion won, from $1.163 billion, or about 1.5 trillion won.
Anthropic's expanding AI investment has raised the possibility that Korean memory makers will benefit. In July, Samsung Electronics signed a memorandum of understanding with Broadcom, a key Anthropic partner, to pursue cooperation worth more than $200 billion, or about 265 trillion won, in memory and foundry operations through 2030. The two companies plan to cooperate on areas including HBM supply for Broadcom's next-generation AI accelerators. The agreement is an MOU to pursue strategic cooperation, however, and neither the volume of HBM to be supplied to Anthropic nor the size of individual delivery contracts has been confirmed. An industry official said that AI companies spending enormous sums to secure computing power means memory demand is growing by that much.
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