Anthropic has begun hiring for a dedicated chip design team to co-design hardware optimized for its large language models, a move that could reduce costs and its dependence on Nvidia's GPUs. The company plans to "co-design hardware and models" to improve performance and efficiency, according to a TechCrunch report. Anthropic raised over $7 billion across multiple funding rounds from backers including Google and Salesforce. Custom chips offer advantages such as optimized performance, lower long-term costs, and control over supply. The company faces challenges including a multi-year development timeline and competition for engineers. Anthropic's Claude competes directly with OpenAI's GPT-4 and Google's Gemini, making performance and cost efficiency critical.