AI Giants Invade Each Other's Markets

Nvidia and AI server chip startup d-Matrix announced a joint system combining their hardware to power AI models. The partnership reflects Nvidia's strategy to work with chip competitors as a hedge against their market success while potentially generating revenue from their growth. The move signals Nvidia's approach to maintaining influence across the AI infrastructure landscape even as new competitors emerge.

AI chip maker SambaNova has raised $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation in a Series F funding round, just five months after its previous mega round. The funding comes despite earlier reports that Intel was exploring an acquisition of the company for approximately $1.6 billion, a figure now significantly below SambaNova's current valuation. The round underscores continued investor confidence in specialized AI chip makers competing in a crowded market.

Zhipu AI, a leading Chinese AI lab behind the GLM series of open-source models, is exploring the design of a custom AI chip to address computing constraints driven by surging demand and U.S. export controls. The Beijing-based company has made preliminary inquiries with Chinese chip design houses but has not yet selected a partner. The move reflects broader pressure on Chinese AI developers to secure computing resources amid geopolitical restrictions.

NVIDIA has introduced Vera, a CPU designed specifically for agentic AI workloads that prioritizes single-threaded performance at scale rather than core count. Unlike traditional data center CPUs optimized for cost per core, Vera maintains high per-core performance across all cores simultaneously, addressing a critical bottleneck in AI agent systems where each sequential step depends on the previous result. The architecture reflects a fundamental shift in CPU design philosophy driven by the demands of continuous, parallel agent loops rather than intermittent user-driven workloads.