Clive Chan, OpenAI's second hardware employee, joins Anthropic as both companies prepare for IPOs

Chan, who worked on OpenAI's custom chip program and the strategic partnership with Broadcom, is now joining Anthropic. His role description is 'perplexity per picojoule'—a metric combining model prediction quality with energy efficiency.

Anthropic is weighing plans to design its own AI chips, following paths taken by OpenAI and Meta. As of April 2026, the plans were in early stages with no dedicated team yet. Currently, Anthropic runs Claude on Google's TPUs and Amazon chips.

Custom chips could boost Anthropic's financial margins, especially for inference (the step where an AI produces an answer). The move reflects AI becoming increasingly an infrastructure play rather than a research-breakthrough story.