Nvidia still owns the AI chip race, but AMD and Intel are making Wall Street reconsider

Nvidia’s grip on the AI chip market remains firm, with the company holding between 75% and 81% of AI accelerator revenue share in the first half of 2026. Its data center sales are projected to exceed $150 billion for the year. Nvidia stock gained roughly 15% in H1 2026. AMD? Up about 114%. Intel? A face-melting 200% to 220%. The numbers behind the AI chip pecking order AMD sits at roughly 5% to 7% of AI accelerator revenue, translating to somewhere in the $7 billion to $15 billion range. Intel trails badly at around 1%. AMD locked down a significant partnership with OpenAI for its Instinct MI450 chips, with deliveries expected to start in late 2026. Intel is readying its Crescent Island AI GPU for sampling in the second half of 2026. The chip is designed for high memory efficiency, offering up to 480GB. Why Wall Street is rotating away from Nvidia Hyperscalers like Google, Amazon, and others have been building custom silicon, think Google’s TPU and AWS’s Trainium, that collectively captures a growing share of the AI compute market. These custom ASIC solutions are outpacing the growth of traditional chip competitors, which means AMD and Intel aren’t just fighting Nvidia. They’re fig...