The company, the leading global designer and supplier of AI chips, is said to be looking to take advantage of the booming market for custom AI chips to better position itself in an increasingly competitive AI market.
Nvidia, which already controls around 80% of the high-end AI chip market, has OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta Platforms among its customers. However, they have started to develop their own internal chips for specific needs and so Nvidia is now said to be looking to play a much bigger role in helping them to develop custom AI chips.
Nvidia supplies H100 or A100 processors which can sell for thousands of dollars and Meta, for example, is looking to develop a stockpile in excess of 350,000 H100s this year.
Nvidia is said to have been talking to a host of customers about a possible move towards developing custom chips and has spoken with customers from across different sectors such as data centres, telecoms, automotive and video games.
According to estimates the customer chip market was worth roughly $30bn in 2023, which amounts to roughly 5% of annual global chip sales.
Nvidia would normally offer IP and technology, so a move into chip fabrication and packaging could really shake things up and pose a real threat to the likes of Broadcom and Marvell, which currently dominate the market.
Neither Nvidia, or various customers, have commented on these reports…yet!
