Updated October 202670+ pagesPDF

AI Chips Report

Funding, valuations and who’s ahead

Cover of NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report: funding, valuations and who's ahead, 2026 edition
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.
Does Nvidia fund the startups trying to replace it? No. All 10 startup rounds Nvidia joined recently were in chips that link AI chips together. Rivals it pays to absorb instead: $17B to license Groq’s chip and hire its team. 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.
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.
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.
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.
Do a few AI chip startups take most of the money? Ten of them take half. Six US startups, each with more than $1B raised, took 37% of the $25.8B raised by AI chip startups recently. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
Did Nvidia get pushed out of China after the US chip bans? Largely, yes. As the US rules tightened, Nvidia’s share of China’s AI chips fell from ~95% to ~8% expected in 2026. Huawei is expected to take about half. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.
When did money start pouring into AI chip startups? In 2026. AI chip startups raised $15.0B in the first nine months of 2026, more than in 2024 and 2025 together ($10.8B). The third quarter alone ($8.4B) beat all of 2025. Chart from NewMarketPitch's AI Chips report.

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Inside the report

  • 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
  • Who’s growing the fastest
  • Which investors are making the biggest bets
  • Which business models are winning
  • What are the biggest unsolved problems
  • What technologies are gaining traction
  • 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