Nvidia (NVDA) shares hit an all-time high on Friday, as the AI craze continues into early 2024. Nvidia’s stock price jumped more than 2% to $584.87 as of midday. Shares of the artificial intelligence giant have risen by about 18% in the first few weeks of the new year, and by 179% over the past 12 months. Its market capitalization is rapidly approaching $1.5 trillion.
But Nvidia isn’t the only company cashing in on the AI hype. AMD Competition (AMD) reached an all-time high intraday on Thursday, hitting $168.60 per share. The chipmaker is up 94% over the past 12 months. Intel (INTC) shares jumped 57% during the same period.
Nvidia got a big vote of confidence on Thursday when Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company is spending billions of dollars to acquire thousands of Nvidia chips for its AI projects. In a post on Instagram Reels, Zuckerberg said Meta will build a complete AI infrastructure with 350,000 Nvidia H100 chips by the end of 2024 with the goal of developing general artificial intelligence.
Zuckerberg also said he wants to make Meta’s AGI open source, allowing others to use and work with it.
Nvidia is the world’s leading developer of AI chips, with an estimated market share of between 70% and 90% of the global market. But it’s not just Nvidia’s hardware that helps it stay ahead of its competitors. The company’s Cuda software, which developers use to create AI platforms, acts as a trench keeping Nvidia above the fray.
However, Nvidia’s competitors are coming together to grab market share. In December, AMD debuted its MI300 accelerator, which is designed to go head-to-head with Nvidia’s data center accelerators. Meanwhile, Intel is building its own Gaudi3 AI accelerator, which will also compete with Nvidia’s offerings.
However, it’s not just AMD and Intel. Hyperscalers, which include cloud providers Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG, GOOGL), and Amazon (AMZN), as well as Meta, are increasingly turning to chips they develop themselves to power their own AI accelerators in the form of what are known as ASICs, or ASICs. Application-specific integrated circuits.
Think of AI graphics accelerators from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel as jacks of all trades. They can be used for a range of different AI-related tasks, ensuring that the chips can handle anything a company needs.
ASICs, on the other hand, are masters of a single trade. They’re specifically designed to meet a company’s AI needs and are often more efficient than GPUs from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel.
This is a problem for Nvidia, since hyperscalers spend big when it comes to AI-powered GPUs. But as ASICs start to take over, they may need less Nvidia chips.
However, the AI explosion is still in its infancy. The vast majority of companies that will benefit from AI are not yet in the game. In other words, there is still plenty of room for growth. Even if Nvidia’s market share takes a hit, its revenue will continue to increase as the AI field booms.
For now, Nvidia remains the king of AI.
Daniel Holley He is the technology editor at Yahoo Finance. He’s been covering the tech industry since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @Daniel Holly.
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