Embattled social media giant Facebook Inc. is set to join the trend among larger technology firms to reduce its dependence on silicon suppliers such as Intel Corp. and Qualcomm Inc.

Tech giants such as Apple Inc. and Google LLC have been designing their own computer chips for some time already. Now, according to Bloomberg, Facebook is set to join them as it attempts to put together its own team to work on the design of a new breed of chips for artificial intelligence work.

“Big tech companies realize that silicon and hardware is a key to differentiated experiences and services,” said Patrick Moorhead, president and principal analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy. “It’s kind of ironic, but hardware is driving software right now. The biggest reason is the simplification of software design tools and the incredible competitiveness of foundries like GlobalFoundries and TSMC” that actually manufacture the chips.

Apple’s purpose-built chips are designed to help it control the new features it develops for its iPhone and iPad devices, and also manage the timeline of new releases of those devices. Meanwhile, Google’s custom chips are said to be used in its data centers for a range of high-powered and data-intensive workloads.

Bloomberg says Facebook wants to do something similar, and to that end it has listed new job openings for application-specific integrated circuit and field-programmable gate array engineers. ASICs and FPGAs are both used as “hardware accelerators” that can boost the performance of regular computer chips. ASICs, for example, can perform specialized tasks to boost performance while also reducing power consumption. FPGAs, meanwhile, can be reprogrammed on the fly for different workloads and offer lower latency than regular chips.

Facebook’s new job listings also mention things such as compression and video encoding, which could be a hint that the company is looking for engineers to help it store the massive amount of data it hoards more efficiently.

One analyst told SiliconANGLE that it wasn’t a surprise to see Facebook moving in this direction because it needs to reduce its costs versus advertising competitors such as Google. “Also, Amazon Web Services is equally looking for consumer sentiment, so Facebook needs to build out its own data centers and create purpose-built infrastructure to run AI better and cheaper,” said Holger Mueller, principal analyst and vice president at Constellation Research Inc.

“The interesting question will be how successful Facebook is, and whether or not it wants to provide that infrastructure beyond its own internal use cases,” Mueller added.

Another possible use for Facebook’s new chips could be the hardware it’s developing. The release of Facebook’s long-awaited smart speaker has been delayed, but it’s still expected to arrive later this year. The company is also building a virtual reality headset, and both products could benefit from customized chips.

In any case, Facebook is clearly looking to reduce its dependence on third-party suppliers in what looks to be a new strategy to increase the efficiency of its products and services and reduce risk.

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