Nvidia's position atop the global AI semiconductor market is facing its most meaningful pressure yet as rival chipmakers accelerate investment, win new contracts and narrow long-standing performance gaps. The company's latest earnings report, which showed a 62% year-over-year revenue jump to $57 billion, triggered another surge in its share price and pushed Wall Street's fourth-quarter forecasts toward $65 billion. But analysts say the momentum has also energized competitors that see an opportunity to challenge Nvidia's dominance as AI infrastructure spending expands across the global technology sector.
The sharp rise in quarterly revenue was driven almost entirely by Nvidia's data-center division, which reached $51 billion and remains the engine of the company's AI strategy. Investors reacted strongly, sending Nvidia stock to $1.30 per share, up from $0.78 a year ago. Outstanding orders now exceed $300 billion for its Blackwell and next-generation Rubin chips, underscoring the scale of demand from cloud providers and AI developers.
Yet the explosive growth has also drawn rivals deeper into the market. AMD has emerged as one of Nvidia's most aggressive challengers. The company is projecting annual data-center growth of 60% over the next three to five years.
AMD expects to report $15 billion in data-center revenue this year, with internal models suggesting that figure could surpass $60 billion by 2028 if sales trends continue. New partnerships with Oracle and OpenAI aim to reduce the performance gap separating AMD's accelerators from Nvidia's, a critical factor in large-scale enterprise adoption.
Broadcom is also gaining ground.
The company anticipates $20 billion in AI-related revenue this fiscal year, a 64% increase from last year, supported by rising demand for custom silicon and networking hardware that supports AI workloads. Broadcom ended the last quarter with a backlog exceeding $110 billion and is reportedly pursuing a long-term supply agreement with OpenAI that could yield as much as $100 billion in sales by 2029, according to industry projections referenced in early analyses.
For now, Nvidia continues to benefit from structural advantages: massive early investment, an entrenched software ecosystem, and existing relationships with hyperscale cloud providers. AI infrastructure spending is projected to reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030, and broader estimates suggest AI technology could generate roughly $20 trillion in global economic value by 2032. Those forecasts underpin investor confidence in Nvidia's long-term trajectory despite rising competition and concerns about overheated valuations reminiscent of the late-1990s dot-com cycle.
