The Chip Wars, The Networking Moat, and The Model Makers Through NVIDIA’s Lens

NVIDIA’s dominance is real, but the competitive landscape is more nuanced than headline numbers suggest. Meanwhile, the networking moat — the hidden lock-in nobody saw coming — may be NVIDIA’s most durable advantage.

The Chip Wars — Multi-Vendor Future

• NVIDIA: ~66% compute share, ~79% revenue share, CUDA ecosystem lock-in
• Google TPU: ~13% compute share, 3x better price-performance, Ironwood closing gap
• Amazon Trainium: ~11% compute share, internal optimization play
• AMD: ~6% compute share, Meta running Llama on MI300X
• Huawei: ~4% compute share, China-only geopolitical alternative

NVIDIA’s counter is systems-level integration. The Vera Rubin platform with six co-designed chips isn’t just faster silicon — it’s a systems argument. The annual architecture cadence (Hopper → Blackwell → Vera Rubin → Rubin Ultra) keeps competitors 1-2 generations behind.

The Networking Moat — The Hidden Lock-In

Networking hit $11 billion in Q4 (+267% YoY). NVIDIA is now “the world’s largest networking business.” This is the actual lock-in mechanism — more durable than GPU performance leadership alone.

Three-tier architecture, all NVIDIA-controlled: NVLink (scale-up within rack) → Spectrum-X (scale-out between racks) → InfiniBand (ultra-low-latency for training). Once deployed, you don’t just replace GPUs — you’d need to replace the entire interconnect architecture.

The Model Makers — Through NVIDIA’s Lens

• Anthropic: Revenue grown ~10x in a year, “severely capacity-constrained.” Literally cannot generate more revenue because it cannot access enough GPUs.
• OpenAI: Pivoting from model leadership to platform lock-in (Codex, Agents SDK).
• Meta: Deploying “millions of Blackwells and Rubin GPUs.” Open-source Llama commoditizes models while strengthening Meta’s infrastructure position.
• China: Jensen’s candid warning: “Our competitors in China have the potential to disrupt the structure of the global AI industry.”

Every single one of them runs on NVIDIA infrastructure — the ultimate platform position.

This analysis is part of NVIDIA & The State of AI from The Business Engineer by FourWeekMBA.