Circling the Nvidia moat

TL;DR: Meta’s new partnership with Google to use more of its AI chips is another sign that companies want to be less dependent on Nvidia—but Nvidia will still be king for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, gaming GPU prices could get even more expensive.

What happened: If it’s a day ending in y, chances are major AI companies are making deals. This week alone, there are reports that:

• Google and Meta are teaming up to make Google’s in-house AI chips play nicer with the leading AI development framework, which was originally developed at Meta.
• Meta is in talks to spend billions on Google’s chips, generally much cheaper than Nvidia’s, starting in 2027.
• Amazon may inject up to $10 billion into OpenAI, an investment that would see the ChatGPT-maker use more of Amazon’s AI chips.

These new partnerships show just how much key AI players want alternatives to Nvidia, even as they continue to strike deals with the GPU giant.

Why it matters: Right now, Nvidia is the go-to chip provider in AI computing, partly because it’s easiest to use. Its programming layer and developer tools platform, which makes AI code run efficiently on Nvidia GPUs, is the industry standard. It doesn’t mean the software is irreplaceable, but first-mover advantage has a hell of a gravitational pull: One widely cited estimate put Nvidia at having 85% of the global AI chip market as of mid-2025. That market dominance has given Nvidia a lot of control over pricing and the terms of the deals it strikes. If one company can set the going rate for the most in-demand hardware, everyone else ends up paying a premium until real substitutes exist at scale.

What does this mean for you?: For consumers, Nvidia’s primacy in the AI fervor doesn’t bode well for gaming GPU prices, which have already been sky-high for years now. New reports suggest Nvidia could be cutting up to 40% of gaming GPU production in 2026.

Is dethroning Nvidia realistic?: No one is snatching the crown from a $4 trillion-dollar company tomorrow. More realistically, what we might see in the next few years is a slow erosion of Nvidia’s power. If alternative chips become easy to use with mainstream AI tools, Nvidia’s share could slide from “total domination” to just “enormous.” —WK

If you want to nerd out: Nvidia and the battle for the future of AI chips.