OpenAI and SpaceX are building custom AI chips to escape Nvidia's grip

The shift away from Nvidia's dominance reflects AI market maturation. Scale and margin pressure push companies toward vertical integration—custom silicon optimizes for specific workloads (inference vs. training) and cuts dependency on a single supplier whose chips carry premium pricing. This fragments the infrastructure layer: winners will be companies that build chips and software together (see Apple's trajectory), while Nvidia faces margin compression in high-volume segments even as it remains unchallenged in cutting-edge training accelerators. What matters is control over the supply chain for the next computing paradigm, not Nvidia's displacement.