NVIDIA to Make Its Own CPUs, Taking Aim at AMD and Intel

[Financial News, New York = Reporter Lee Byung-chul]NVIDIA, which has dominated the artificial intelligence chip market, is now making a full-scale push into the central processing unit market, challenging Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) and Intel. The move appears to be part of a strategy to control all core components of AI servers by supplying CPUs as well as GPUs directly.
On the 21st local time, NVIDIA unveiled the detailed specifications and performance of Vera, its data center CPU. The company said it supplied Vera to OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceX and others in June, and that customers have begun evaluating the product.
Vera is NVIDIA's first server CPU with cores designed in-house, rather than using the standard CPU architecture Arm Holdings provides to multiple chipmakers. It is optimized for AI agent processing and is designed to maximize performance when paired with GPUs. NVIDIA said Vera delivers up to 50% better AI agent processing performance than existing x86 architecture CPUs.
The strategy is aimed at extending NVIDIA's control of the AI server market from GPUs to CPUs. The company is pursuing vertical integration by supplying both GPUs and CPUs and selling the entire server as a single integrated system.
The market potential is also significant. NVIDIA expects the global server CPU market to grow to $200 billion over the long term. Wolfe Research estimated Vera's average selling price at about $5,000 and projected shipments of roughly 1.3 million units this year.
Still, NVIDIA is a late entrant in the CPU market. Intel and AMD currently split the server CPU market between them. According to Gartner, AMD is rapidly increasing its share by expanding cooperation with hyperscalers.
Industry watchers note that the spread of AI agents is once again raising the importance of CPUs. Ian Buck, vice president of NVIDIA's hyperscale division, said, "In the era of AI agents, the CPU will play a much more critical role," and added, "How quickly the CPU processes data and passes it to the GPU will determine performance."
However, since NVIDIA has yet to secure major cloud providers other than Oracle Corporation, a key question is how quickly it can reshape a market still dominated by AMD and Intel.




[email protected] Reporter Lee Byung-chul Reporter