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OpenAI unveils its first custom chip, built by Broadcom
7:54 AM PDT · June 24, 2026
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On Wednesday, OpenAI unveiled its first custom-built inference processor, designed and manufactured in collaboration with Broadcom. Named Jalapeño, the new processor was designed specifically for the unique needs of OpenAI’s inference systems. OpenAI’s own AI models assisted in the development of the chip, the company said.
While the chip is still being tested, OpenAI says early results show significantly better performance-per-watt than current state-of-the-art alternatives.
The partnership was officially announced in October, but OpenAI’s chip plans have long been rumored as a way to reduce the company’s dependence on Nvidia’s GPUs. Google and Amazon have both built custom chips to serve a similar purpose, often called “AI accelerators” — silicon designed specifically to speed up machine learning workloads.
OpenAI president Greg Brockman explained the company’s approach to chip development on its in-house podcast, shortly after the Broadcom partnership was announced.
“We have a deep understanding of the workload,” Brockman said in the episode. “We’ve really been looking for specific workloads that are underserved, [and asking] how can we build something that will be able to accelerate what’s possible?”
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Jalapeño is specifically designed for inference, the process of running pre-built AI models in response to user commands. In the announcement, OpenAI emphasized the chip’s low operating cost when running real-time coding models. It’s likely that more performance-intensive tasks like pre-training will still rely on Nvidia hardware, but even small reductions in inference costs could do a lot to improve the company’s bottom line.
Optimizing that inference system may prove to be a crucial factor in the economics of AI going forward — and it’s likely to take place at every level of the stack. OpenAI is already building agentic products like Codex and the models that power them, as well as data centers to run those models. Moving into purpose-built chips lets the company go even further in that process, as the company explained in its announcement.
Is the US government's Anthropic ban accidentally helping the brand? | Equity Podcast
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“OpenAI is not only developing frontier models or building products on top of them; it is designing the infrastructure underneath them: chip architecture, kernels, memory systems, networking, scheduling, deployment systems, and product experience,” the company wrote. “Because OpenAI operates across the stack, each layer can be optimized around the same goal: making its models faster, more reliable, and more affordable for users.”
Topics
AI, Broadcom, OpenAI, semiconductors
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Russell Brandom
AI Editor
Russell Brandom has been covering the tech industry since 2012, with a focus on platform policy and emerging technologies. He previously worked at The Verge and Rest of World, and has written for Wired, The Awl and MIT’s Technology Review. He can be reached at russell.brandom@techcrunch.com or on Signal at 412-401-5489.
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OpenAI launches new initiative to help find and patch open source bugs
5:11 PM PDT · June 22, 2026
OpenAI announced a new initiative on Monday designed to help the open source community improve its cybersecurity game and ward off bugs.
“Patch the Planet” (which is a not-so-subtle allusion to “ Hack the Planet,” the iconic catchphrase from the 1995 movie “Hackers”) will see OpenAI team up with the security company Trail of Bits to help open source maintainers secure their projects.
OpenAI said security staff from Trail of Bits will work directly with open source maintainers to review potential code issues. OpenAI’s security tools — like Codex Security — will be used to assist in the process.
“Many maintainers are already being asked to sort through more reports, more quickly, with the same limited time and resources,” OpenAI said Monday. “Patch the Planet is built to reduce that burden, not add to it: security engineers review findings before they reach maintainers, work with projects to develop patches and tests, and build reusable workflows that help teams continue improving security after the first fixes land.”
In other words, Trail of Bits engineers will function more or less like code EMTs — there to help open source project maintainers identify and triage potential issues, all supported by OpenAI’s software. It sounds like an ambitious project, and it’s somewhat unclear how it will function in the long term, or how it plans to scale up (if at all).
Open source projects are the digital bedrock upon which the commercial software industry rests, but, unfortunately, due to the decentralized and poorly monitored structure of that ecosystem, much of the software is insecure. Bugs in open source projects can turn into major problems for commercial codebases. The log4j debacle from several years ago — when a bad vulnerability was discovered in a widely used open source utility — is a good example.
Much of the concern surrounding tools like Mythos (Anthropic’s highly publicized security tool) seems to stem from the fact that AI can now automatically identify existing bugs within codebases and set about creating exploits for them. While the automation of cybercrime is not new, these tools undoubtedly have the potential to make it significantly more convenient for bad actors.
Is the US government's Anthropic ban accidentally helping the brand? | Equity Podcast
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OpenAI is turning that formula on its head by using AI to help the open source community better protect itself. It’s hard not to read it as a competitive swipe at Anthropic, while also recognizing that it’s something the open source community desperately needs.
Topics
AI, open source software, OpenAI, Trail of Bits
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Lucas Ropek
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Lucas is a senior writer at TechCrunch, where he covers artificial intelligence, consumer tech, and startups. He previously covered AI and cybersecurity at Gizmodo.
You can contact Lucas by emailing lucas.ropek@techcrunch.com.
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After betting the firm on Anthropic, Menlo Ventures raises victorious $3B fund
12:49 PM PDT · June 23, 2026
Menlo Ventures announced $3 billion in funds on Tuesday, the largest raise in its 50-year history, driven in large part by its AI portfolio, especially Anthropic. Its stake in the model maker is now worth about $14 billion, sources told Bloomberg.
To hear the folks at Menlo talk about it, they were white-knuckling it when they made a bet-the-firm $750 million investment in Anthropic in 2024, preemptively leading the model maker’s Series D. At the time, that round quadrupled the startup’s valuation to $18.4 billion.
While the bet itself was arguably not wildly risky, the means by which the firm raised that kind of capital was more so.
Menlo had been an early investor in the Series C, before Anthropic had a product. By 2024, long before Claude Code and Claude Mythos, the company was showing signs of success. It had landed a $4 billion deal from Amazon and was being hotly pursued by VCs, having been founded by former OpenAI researchers, including siblings CEO Dario Amodei and president Daniela Amodei. It was a rising-star AI company, as so many startups founded by OpenAI alum still are today.
But how Menlo raised the funds was eye-popping. In 2024, the venture world was just rebounding from the post-pandemic VC winter, with big-money firms like SoftBank and Tiger Global still licking their wounds. No one was writing checks for three-quarters of a billion dollars.
Menlo structured the bulk of deal, about $500 million worth, as a special purpose vehicle, or SPV — a one-off investment entity created to pool money from multiple sources for a single deal. Menlo also contributed $250 million from its own fund and contributions from Menlo insiders, sources told Forbes at the time, bringing the total round to $750 million.
Since then, AI SPVs have become as commonplace as cockroaches, with Anthropic a particular target — so much so that the AI company issued a warning last month, calling all unauthorized SPVs and secondary markets claiming to sell its stock “scams.”
Is the US government's Anthropic ban accidentally helping the brand? | Equity Podcast
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But for those investors in Menlo’s authorized 2024 deal, the aggressive push paid off handsomely. Menlo went on to invest in the company’s Series E and F.
On top of that, Menlo followed up by launching a $100 million startup fund with Anthropic in 2024, which they cutely named Anthology. That fund has since ballooned into capital deployed to date closer to $250 million, a source with knowledge of the fund tells TechCrunch. It has not only backed 60+ companies (and offered them support, like access to Anthropic leaders and credits for Claude), but has also produced a number of returns already. These include Graphite, acquired by Cursor, and Astrix Security, acquired by Cisco.
The fund has allowed Menlo to get its finger of the pulse of AI startups, categories, and tech, at the earliest stages. The VC firm has since built a broader rep for AI investing, counting AI stars like OpenRouter, Higgsfield, Legora, Lovable, OpenEvidence, and many others in its portfolio.
Topics
Anthropic, Fundraising, menlo ventures, SPVs, Venture
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Julie Bort
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Julie Bort is the Startups/Venture Desk editor for TechCrunch.
You can contact or verify outreach from Julie by emailing julie.bort@techcrunch.com or via @Julie188 on X.
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