AI chips & GPUs, explained
Why Nvidia became one of the world's most valuable companies — the hardware behind the AI boom.
Modern artificial intelligence runs on specialised computer chips. The most important are GPUs (graphics processing units) — originally built to draw video-game graphics, but perfect for the massive number of simple calculations that training an AI model requires. The company that dominates this market, Nvidia, has become one of the most valuable in the world as a result.
Why GPUs?
Training a large AI model means doing trillions of small maths operations. A regular computer chip (CPU) does these one after another; a GPU does thousands in parallel, which makes it far faster and cheaper for this kind of work. The biggest AI systems are trained on tens of thousands of these chips wired together in vast data centres.
Why it matters for markets
Because these chips are scarce and expensive, they have become a strategic resource. Access to them shapes which companies and countries can build cutting-edge AI, which is why export controls, supply shortages and Nvidia's earnings now move markets far beyond the tech sector. Nothing on this site is financial advice.