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AI Industry Map / Chips / Chip design
Chips

Chip design

Designing the processors that train and run AI: Nvidia's GPUs, and custom chips built for Google, Amazon and others.

How big
Nvidia alone runs at roughly $350B a year in data centre sales (estimate from its July 2026 quarter)
Growth
Total AI chip capacity has grown about 3.3 times a year since 2022 (Epoch AI).
On the map
15 companies, 6 money flows, 4 openings

Who is making money

The companies earning or raising real money in this part of AI. Suppliers are marked: they sell to the builders rather than to end users.

Nvidia
NVDA Supplier

the default AI chip

$89.0B data centre revenue in the quarter to July 2026 (fiscal Q2 2027), out of $96.2B total

Open profile
OpenAI

Is designing its own AI chip with Broadcom, to run beside its Nvidia and AMD systems.

About $13B revenue in 2025, against about $34B of costs (reported)

Open profile
Google
GOOGL

its own AI chips

25% of AI chip supply (Epoch AI)

Open profile
Amazon
AMZN Supplier

its own AI chips

5% of AI chip supply (Epoch AI)

Open profile
Broadcom
AVGO Supplier

designs custom chips for the big clouds

AI chip revenue $16.7B in a quarter, up 221%

Open profile
Groq
Supplier

Makes fast inference chips for running models, built around its own LPU design.

$3.5B in a 2026 round that followed its Nvidia licensing deal

Open profile
Cerebras
CBRS Supplier

Makes very large single-chip AI systems built for fast answers from models.

$510M in 2025, with $87.9M net income

Open profile
Marvell Technology
MRVL Supplier

Designs custom AI chips for large cloud customers, and the optical chips that link data centres.

$2.006B in the quarter to July 2026 (fiscal Q2 2026), up 58%

Open profile
Arm
ARM Supplier

Licenses the processor designs (CPU cores) that most of the world's chips are built on, and earns royalties on each chip sold.

$4.92B for the year to March 2026, a record

Open profile
Cadence Design Systems
CDNS Supplier

Sells chip-design software and design blocks used to build AI and other chips.

$1.58B in the quarter to June 2026, up 24.2%. Full-year 2026 guidance about $6.3B

Open profile
Synopsys
SNPS Supplier

Sells the software that engineers use to design and check AI chips, plus the chip building blocks they reuse.

$2.477B in the quarter to July 2026 (fiscal Q3 2026), up from $1.740B a year earlier. Full-year guidance about $9.7B

Open profile
AMD
AMD Supplier

the main GPU rival

Deal to supply up to 6 GW of chips to OpenAI from late 2026

Open profile
SambaNova
Supplier

Designs AI chips and systems for running large models for companies and governments.

About $11B after a round of about $1B (July 2026)

Open profile
Etched
Supplier

Designs chips built only for running transformer models, the design behind most current AI.

$500M Series B round in January 2026

Open profile
Tenstorrent
Supplier

Designs AI chips and open source chip designs, led by chip designer Jim Keller.

Open profile

Where the money flows

Clouds, AI labs and GPU clouds pay Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom, who pay TSMC and the memory makers to build the chips.

The openings

Gaps still open in this area, from ones a small business could take to ones only giants can play.

  • Small business Tracking cost per token and benchmarks across chip types for buyers
  • Startup money Software that makes non-Nvidia chips easy to use (compilers, porting tools)
  • Startup money Chips built only for running models (inference)
  • Giants only Taking on Nvidia head to head
The sceptic's view

A handful of buyers account for most chip revenue, and some deals are circular: analysts doubt OpenAI can pay for its AMD order.

Sources: epoch.ai, runtimewire.com, fourweekmba.com, constellationr.com

The map updates three times a week.

241 companies across 25 areas, 62 money flows and 89 openings so far. New research lands every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

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