Anthropic is telling prospective investors in its upcoming initial public offering that Claude can help design semiconductors, presenting AI-assisted chip engineering as an operational advantage as the company prepares a listing that could value it near $1.5 trillion, according to The Information. In recent meetings, the company said a hardware group formed earlier this year, staffed by 15 people, is using its own Claude models to speed up work on custom silicon, framing the capability as a way to compress timelines that established chip designers such as Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices have long treated as fixed. Anthropic has not said it intends to sell Claude's chip-design abilities as a product, but the suggestion moved shares of software companies in the field: Synopsys Inc fell 2.5% and Cadence Design Systems Inc dropped 4.5% in Tuesday trading, as investors weighed whether foundational model makers might encroach on electronic design automation, a segment projected to generate a combined $16 billion this fiscal year. Anthropic has reportedly approached several EDA firms about access to proprietary chip-design datasets. Wider adoption may prove difficult, however, as chipmakers guard blueprints closely, and building its own silicon could strain relations with Anthropic's main financial backers, which have collectively invested roughly $90 billion in the startup. Anthropic also said in a post on X on Oct. 29 that it had updated its mobile apps to support the iPhone Duo, Apple's dual-screen handset, with a split view