Building or backing a AI chip company? See how the money is really made

Updated October 202670+ pagesPDF

AI Chips Business Models
Cover of NewMarketPitch's AI Chips Business Models report, 2026 edition
How expensive are AI chip stocks, measured by sales? Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom trade at 18 to 22 times their yearly sales, like big tech. Most challengers cost more: Cerebras ×41, Chinese rivals ×26 to ×87. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Is Etched, an AI chip startup, really worth $21 billion? Mostly on promise. It has no published sales, and its announced contracts back only ~$1B of its value. The rest is a bet on its chip. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Who leads China’s AI chip race now that Nvidia is almost out? Huawei, by far: ~$7.5B of AI chip sales in 2025, ~half of the market expected in 2026. Of the five listed rivals, only Cambricon made a profit. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Can Google’s and Amazon’s own AI chips beat Nvidia? Not on size: Nvidia sells far more, $89B of data-center chips in a quarter. But their chips grow faster and won big lab orders, from Anthropic and OpenAI. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Do AI chip challengers depend on one big customer? Often. Two related Abu Dhabi buyers brought 86% of Cerebras’ 2025 sales. One buyer, Tencent, brought 84% of Enflame’s. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Who is winning the AI labs’ giant chip orders? Not the startups. The giants’ own chips (~18 GW) and Nvidia and AMD (~24 GW) split them. Startups got ~2%, one deal: Cerebras with OpenAI. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
How much did the tech giants pay for AI chip startups? Up to $17B. Nvidia paid $17B to license Groq’s chip and hire its founders, five times the next deal. Outright purchases went for $0.3B to $3.25B. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Cerebras or Groq: who won the race for fast AI answers? Cerebras: ~3.7 times faster on the same model, listed, ~$0.9B of sales a year. Groq licensed its chip to Nvidia and now runs a cloud. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Did the recent AI chip IPOs hold up on the stock market? Not in the US. Cerebras, which raised $6.4B at its May IPO, trades 36% below its IPO price. China’s AI chip IPOs trade 1.3 to 4.3 times their offer price. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.

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Inside the report

  • Which business models are winning
  • Who pays, and how much
  • Who makes money, who burns cash
  • Where the margins really are
  • Who are the top companies today
  • Who’s ahead, and who’s falling behind
  • What are their valuations
  • Who’s getting funded, and by whom
  • What are the biggest unsolved problems
  • What has changed in the last 12 months
  • Where are the biggest opportunities
  • Who are the likely future winners
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Verified data with sourcesUpdated in October 2026