With the rapid development of artificial intelligence, the investment boom in AI chip manufacturers has gradually intensified. Among them, Blaize has attracted wide attention in the market. Founded by a former Intel engineer, the company announced its plan to go public on NASDAQ through a SPAC (Special Purpose Acquisition Company) on January 14, 2025. Blaize was established in 2011 and is headquartered in El Dorado Hills, California. To date, it has raised $335 million in investments, primarily from Samsung and Mercedes.

Nvidia's stock fell over 6% on Tuesday, a decline that occurred the day after the company announced its next-generation AI chips, following a record high in stock price. This drop is partly attributed to a broader sell-off of tech stocks due to soaring U.S. Treasury yields. Nevertheless, Nvidia continues to be recognized as the strongest performer among the so-called 'Super Seven Giants', with a stock price increase of 185% over the past year and more than 900% over the past two years. As artificial intelligence continues to thrive, Nvidia has become the biggest beneficiary.

At the recent CES conference, NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated that the performance improvement speed of the company's AI chips has surpassed the historical standards set by Moore's Law. Moore's Law, proposed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, predicted that the number of transistors on a computer chip would approximately double every year, consequently doubling chip performance as well. However, in recent years, the pace of progress of Moore's Law has significantly slowed. Image source note: The image was generated by AI, image licensed by Midjourney.

In 2024, NVIDIA significantly increased its efforts in venture capital, investing as much as $1 billion across 50 different funding rounds and several corporate acquisitions. This figure marks a substantial rise from $872 million and 39 funding rounds in 2023. After profiting $9 billion from AI chip sales, NVIDIA is concentrating resources on 'core AI' companies that require substantial computing power, many of which are also NVIDIA's clients. The investment list for 2024 includes some well-known companies.

Recently, the Shenzhen Municipal Bureau of Industry and Information Technology officially issued several measures to build Shenzhen into a pioneer city for artificial intelligence, aimed at promoting the application and development of the AI industry. With an annual investment of up to 300 million yuan, the focus is on cutting-edge areas such as the mathematical principles of AI, infrastructure, core algorithms, as well as embodied intelligence, autonomous driving, and AI chips, to carry out fundamental research and tackle technological challenges. Among them, for demonstration application projects with promotional value, the city will provide subsidies of up to 30% based on the actual investment of the project construction entities, with a maximum limit.

In a recent earnings call, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan shared an optimistic outlook for the future AI chip market, predicting that the company’s revenue in this area will see significant growth by 2027. According to him, the serviceable addressable market (SAM) for Broadcom's AI-related products and network services is expected to be between $60 billion and $90 billion. Tan also revealed that Broadcom is currently collaborating with three major hyperscale customers.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk is fully committed to pursuing AI chips to support his new supercomputer, a move that has already pushed Nvidia's production capacity to its limits. According to a report by The Wall Street Journal, a sales executive at Nvidia mentioned in an internal email that Musk's demand for their chips is putting pressure on the company's supply chain. An Nvidia spokesperson stated, 'We are working hard to meet all customer demands and have significantly increased the available supply.' Image source note: Image generated by AI.

Recently, AMD announced it will lay off approximately 1,000 employees, which is about 4% of its global workforce. The layoffs primarily affect sales and marketing positions in the gaming and consumer PC departments, marking the chip giant's full transition towards the artificial intelligence chip sector. In the thriving AI chip market, NVIDIA currently holds a dominant 80% market share. Analysts predict that by 2028, the AI chip market will reach a scale of $500 billion. AMD's resource restructuring aims to capture a larger share in this rapidly growing market.

In a recent Reddit Q&A, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted that insufficient computing power is one of the main reasons the company is unable to frequently launch new products. He stated that the current AI models are becoming increasingly complex, and OpenAI faces many constraints and difficult decisions on how to allocate computing resources to implement numerous excellent ideas. Reports suggest that OpenAI has encountered difficulties in obtaining sufficient computing infrastructure.

OpenAI officially announces its entry into the AI chip sector through collaboration with chip giant Broadcom, planning to develop its first custom AI inference chip. This strategic move not only marks a significant step towards supply chain autonomy for OpenAI but also targets NVIDIA's current dominance in the AI chip market. According to Reuters, OpenAI has assembled a specialized R&D team of about 20 members, including the chief engineer who participated in the development of Google's Tensor processors. The project will be led by Broadcom for chip design and TSMC for manufacturing.

Nvidia has recently engaged in a series of collaborations with local businesses in India to promote its artificial intelligence chips and technologies. The CEO of the American chip design company, Jensen Huang, announced at an AI summit in Mumbai that Nvidia has partnered with one of India's most valuable companies, Reliance Industries, to co-establish the infrastructure for AI applications. Additionally, tech company Tech Mahindra will use Nvidia's chips and software to develop a Hindi AI model called "Indus2.0."

Recently, TSMC announced that it expects a significant profit increase of 40% in its upcoming Q3 earnings report. This surge is primarily attributed to the booming demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips. As the world's largest contract chip manufacturer, TSMC's clients include renowned companies such as Apple and Nvidia, which are actively advancing AI technology. According to LSEG's smart estimate, analysts predict that TSMC's net profit for the third quarter ending September 30 will reach NT$298.2 billion (approximately US$9.27 billion).

Recently, foreign media reported that ByteDance is accelerating its efforts to self-develop and manufacture AI chips to reduce dependence on expensive chips from NVIDIA. The report claims that ByteDance plans to collaborate with TSMC and expects to mass-produce two self-developed AI chips by 2026, having already reserved the production of hundreds of thousands of chips. More notably, the report pointed out that ByteDance aims for its self-developed chip clusters to achieve four times the computing performance of a single H100 chip at a similar cost. In response, ByteDance quickly addressed this report.