Anthropic discussed acquiring AI chip startup MatX for about $7 billion as it looked to speed up development of custom hardware for its expanding AI business, according to Reuters. People familiar with the matter said the talks later shifted toward a potential partnership. MatX is now seeking a new financing round at a valuation of about $4 billion, one person said. The discussions suggest Anthropic is interested in chips for model training, though the company could also pursue inference chips used to generate chatbot responses.