Betting on a AI chip company? See who’s really ahead before you pick a side

Updated October 202670+ pagesPDF

AI Chips: Who’s Ahead
Cover of NewMarketPitch's AI Chips: Who’s Ahead report, 2026 edition
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.
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.
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.
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.

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Inside the report

  • Who’s ahead, and who’s falling behind
  • How far the challengers are behind Nvidia
  • Who leads on shipments, who only promises
  • What technologies are gaining traction
  • Who are the top companies today
  • What are their valuations
  • Who’s getting funded, and by whom
  • Which business models are winning
  • 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