• Google and Amazon have ambitions to sell AI chips to customers.
• That could make things awkward with Nvidia, which the two tech giants also rely on.
• Taking on Nvidia won't be easy, but one analyst said the process is now "irreversible."

Two of Nvidia's biggest customers might be turning into its biggest threat.

For three years, Nvidia's stock has defied gravity on the premise that the AI industry needs its chips. On Wednesday, when Google and Amazon reported their Q1 earnings, both signaled ambitions to sell their own custom AI chips directly to customers.

So far, Google's TPUs and Amazon's Trainium chips have only been available through Google and Amazon's cloud services. Customers can pay to use them, but they don't own them.

Nvidia is the undisputed leader in AI chips right now. While that shows no sign of stopping anytime soon, recent remarks from Google and Amazon suggest they are ready to challenge Nvidia's throne.

Andy Jassy, the CEO of Amazon, laid down the gauntlet to Nvidia in his annual letter to shareholders earlier this month.

"Virtually all AI thus far has been done on Nvidia chips, but a new shift has started," Jassy wrote, adding that it's "quite possible" that Amazon could start selling its chips directly to customers.

He put a timeline on this plan on the company's Wednesday earnings call, saying "there's a good chance" Amazon will start offering full racks of Trainium chips beyond its own cloud "over the next couple of years."

Google gave an even stronger commitment — and a nearer timeline.

On Wednesday, Google CEO Sundar Pichai publicly said for the first time that the company plans to deliver TPU chips to a "select group of customers" in their own data centers this year, but said the "vast majority" of revenues from those sales won't be realized until 2027.

Pichai said there was a big opportunity for Google's semiconductor business, which would also help fund the next generation of chips. That flywheel could create a mammoth business for Google. Morgan Stanley said in a December research note that selling 500,000 TPU chips could add roughly $13 billion in revenue to Google's balance sheet in 2027.

The company said in its 10-Q filing that it had so far signed a "limited number of agreements" to supply TPUs to customers.

It's also where things could get awkward. Google and Amazon are also big customers of Nvidia. They purchase Nvidia's chips to lease to their customers in their own data centers. Amazon and Google have both said that they will continue to work with Nvidia.

Nvidia shares were down more thean 4% on Thursday. The company didn't immediately respond to a Business Insider request for comment.

'Concerned but not worried'

Breaking into Nvidia's chip dominance will not be easy, analysts told Business Insider.

"Nvidia should be concerned but not worried," said Alvin Nguyen, a senior analyst at Forrester. Nvidia has built a strong ecosystem of hardware, software, and support that has made it easy for customers to choose them, he said.

"Selling products is very different than access to them," he said, adding that Amazon and Google would need to provide services like education and support to enterprises looking to buy their chips.

Google and Amazon's chip racks are also "very bespoke and proprietary" and customized for their own respective data centers, said Patrick Moorhead, CEO and chief analyst of Moor Insights & Strategy. That poses a challenge for reaching mass adoption, he said.

Plus, the chip market isn't a zero-sum game. AI companies are increasingly diversifying and using chips from multiple suppliers simultaneously. OpenAI, for example, has chip deals with Nvidia, AMD, and Broadcom, among others.

However, custom silicon is becoming an "increasingly important part of the AI story" for Google and Amazon, Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik wrote in a note on Thursday. Both companies are pitching their chips as being more cost-effective than Nvidia's.

That opportunity is also opening up as the needs of the AI industry shifts. Earlier this month, Google announced a new TPU chip specifically for inference — the process of running the models once they're trained — which is becoming more critical as more companies bring AI agents online.

Beatriz Valle, a senior analyst for enterprise technology & services at GlobalData, called the decision by Google and Amazon an "extraordinary move" that will diversify the chip sector — and reduce cloud providers' dependence on Nvidia chips.

"This process will take years but it is irreversible now," she said.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang urged all workers, from farmers to electricians, to embrace AI.
• He told podcaster Lex Fridman that the technology could elevate blue-collar jobs, such as carpentry.
• Blue-collar has generally been viewed as less likely to be affected by AI disruption than white-collar jobs.

Artificial intelligence isn't only coming for office jobs — Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says blue-collar workers should be paying attention, too.

Huang leads one of the biggest chipmakers fueling the AI revolution. He joined Lex Fridman's podcast in an episode published Monday to discuss everything from AI in space to work.

While blue-collar jobs have been considered relatively safe from AI disruption compared to tech roles like engineering, Huang said workers in every profession, including farming and electrical work, should use artificial intelligence to help future-proof their jobs.

"If I were a farmer, I would absolutely use AI. If I were a pharmacist, I would use AI," Huang said. "I want to see what it could do to elevate my job so that I could be the innovator to revolutionize this industry myself."

For example, he said coding represents a big opportunity for carpenters, and he would go "completely berserk" using AI if he were in that line of work.

"A carpenter with AI is also an architect," he said. "They've just increased the value that they could deliver to the customer. Their artistry just elevated tremendously."

Huang has said before that he is "certain 100% of everybody's jobs will be changed" by artificial intelligence, and that while he expects some jobs to be lost, many will also be created.

Many tasks, for example, will be automated, and those jobs will be highly disrupted, he said on Fridman's podcast.

But, he said, "If your job's purpose includes you … then it's vital that you go learn how to use AI to automate those tasks."

Anxiety grows alongside AI

As AI advances, so has anxiety around job security. The fears aren't unfounded. Companies have slashed thousands of jobs in the name of prioritizing new technology and automation.

Huang's solution: Become an expert in AI, no matter what your job function is.

It could be the difference between landing a job and ending up unemployed. In almost every case, Huang said he'd rather hire the candidate who's an AI expert over one who isn't.

"Every college student should graduate and be an expert in AI," Huang said.

It could help them stay ahead of the curve as AI quickly advances.

The next phase of AI is already here

Artificial general intelligence is a form of AI that elicits anxiety or excitement among the field's most advanced minds. It's the idea that AI will one day meet or surpass human intelligence. Huang said that the age of AGI is already here.

Fridman asked if AI could do Huang's job of starting, growing, and running a successful tech company worth more than $1 billion.

It's possible, Huang said.

He also said, "It's not out of the question" that chatbots like Anthropic's Claude could design an app that billions of people would use for $0.50 apiece, and then go out of business shortly after, similar to websites that went bust in the dot-com era.

Even his job running one of the most successful tech companies today isn't immune to the effects of AI, he said, encouraging everyone to jump on the technology before they're left behind.

"Go see what it can do to transform your current job, elevate yourself," Huang said.