Samsung, Anthropic deal reports cap volatile week for Korean stocks

After a bruising stretch for Korean equities, the week ended on a note that gave investors something to chew on besides losses. Reports surfaced on July 2 that Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, is in early discussions with Samsung Electronics about manufacturing custom AI chips using Samsung’s 2nm process technology.

The discussions are preliminary. Current talks reportedly center on chip specifications, power consumption targets, and how custom silicon would integrate into server infrastructure.

But the context around these talks is anything but preliminary. Anthropic closed its massive Series H funding round on May 28, raising $65B at a post-money valuation of $965B. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix both participated as strategic investors in that round.

If the deal progresses to a formal agreement, it could reportedly surpass previous high-profile foundry contracts Samsung has landed, including its work with Tesla. That would catapult Samsung into the upper tier of AI ASIC production, a market it has historically watched from the sidelines while TSMC dominated.

The Korean market rollercoaster

The KOSPI has had a rough few weeks. Individual trading sessions in late June and early July saw the index swing violently, with single-day drops exceeding 7-8% at their worst. The culprit was a familiar cocktail: uncertainty about whether AI spending is sustainable, worries about semiconductor demand cycles, and the general nervousness that descends on markets when a sector’s narrative starts developing cracks.

Why crypto investors should care

Samsung’s foundry division already manufactures chips used in crypto mining ASICs. Any expansion of its advanced node capacity, whether driven by Anthropic or anyone else, has downstream effects on fabrication availability and pricing for blockchain-specific hardware.

The KOSPI volatility also matters for digital asset markets because Korean retail investors are among the most active crypto traders globally. When Korean equities crater, it creates a wealth effect that can ripple into crypto trading volumes on exchanges like Upbit and Bithumb.

Anthropic has committed to spending roughly $200B over five years with Google Cloud, alongside a collaboration with Amazon for its Trainium capacity. That kind of infrastructure spending creates ripple effects across data center construction, energy markets, and GPU pricing, all of which intersect with crypto mining economics and proof-of-work network security calculations.

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