Nvidia (NVDA) performed well in 2025, gaining more than 40% in value over the last year. It has become one of the best-known AI stocks in recent years, because its high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs) are in large demand for AI applications.
Though competitors have been making progress, Nvidia is still the biggest player in the market. With a current market cap of nearly $4.8 trillion and a 92% market share of the GPU sector, Nvidia is still the industry force to be reckoned with. Nvidia's GPUs also power some of the most prominent AI products, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
But this market isn't a monopoly, and there are a few publicly traded companies that are starting to compete.
Nvidia’s major competitors
Nvidia still controls a large majority of the market for add-on GPUs. But there are two other companies with some market share: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and Intel (INTC).
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD)
Before graphics processing units became prized for industrial computing activities such as running AI models and Bitcoin mining, they were mainly used in gaming PCs and video game consoles — to, as their name suggests, process graphics.
AMD has been Nvidia’s main rival ever since their gaming days, but both companies now derive most of their revenue from selling chips and services to data centers. AMD isn’t quite as specialized in AI chips as Nvidia is, and it has a fraction of its market share. But in 2023, several of the world’s largest tech companies switched from using Nvidia chips to AMD’s Instinct MI300X chip for new AI projects. Over the last year, AMD stock's value increased by over 100%.
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Intel (INTC)
Intel is probably more of a household name than AMD or Nvidia. If you’re reading this article on a Windows computer, there’s a good chance there’s an Intel processor in it. However, Intel is newer to the market for GPUs and other AI chips than Nvidia and AMD. And while Intel may not be as big as a chipmaker, it holds a majority percentage of the total PC GPU market share.
Other publicly-traded AI chipmakers
Together, Nvidia, AMD and Intel make up most of the market for AI chips, but these three are not entirely alone in the chipmaking space. Many big tech companies are creating their own AI hardware, too — they just don’t sell very much of it at the moment (and some of them are only designed in-house but produced elsewhere). These minor chipmakers include:
- IBM (IBM).
- Qualcomm (QCOM).
In some cases, these companies have negligible shares of the overall AI chip market because they’ve primarily developed chips for “in-house” use — to power their own AI products and systems.
For example, Microsoft is a major backer of OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT. Likewise, Amazon is a major shareholder of Anthtropic, a private company that developed Claude, a large language model (LLM) that competes with ChatGPT. Alphabet is the maker of Gemini, another ChatGPT rival.
Is there a case for investing in Nvidia competitors?
The companies listed in the previous section control tiny shares of the AI chip market — but that doesn’t mean they’re tiny companies. All of them are blue-chip tech stocks, and all except IBM and Qualcomm are worth trillions of dollars. A well-diversified portfolio will likely have exposure to some or all of these stocks, either through index funds or individual shares.
The bottom line
Nvidia and AMD have been vying for control of the GPU market for decades. Nvidia has the lead right now, but AMD has recently had some successes with its AI chipmaking efforts, such as big orders from Microsoft, Meta (META) and OpenAI.
However, analysts are more bearish on Intel, which entered the AI chip market later and has failed to get as much traction as Nvidia or AMD. Of the 33 analysts surveyed by TipRanks who cover Intel, 21 rate it a "hold," and four rate it a "sell," with eight rating it as a "buy." As for AMD, 23 out of the 31 analysts who have rated it give it a "buy" while eight give it a "hold" and none advise selling it.
Neither the author nor editor held positions in the aforementioned investments at the time of publication.
Article sources
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- 1.IOT Analytics. Generative AI Market Report 2025–2030.
- 2.Jon Peddie Research. Q3’25 PC GPU shipments increased by 2.5% from last quarter, which might suggest a creep forward . Accessed Feb 27, 2026.
