Google tried to sell AI chips to Nvidia's own cloud partner, Nvidia had a quiet answer
Google is attempting to sell its proprietary Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) to cloud providers that have traditionally relied on Nvidia hardware. Nvidia is reportedly countering these efforts with financial incentives to maintain its dominance in the AI compute market.
Why it matters
This competition highlights the intense battle for control over the infrastructure powering the AI boom, with Google challenging Nvidia's near-monopoly.
Google is quietly trying to sell its homegrown AI chips to a new class of cloud providers, and Nvidia has apparently noticed. According to a report from The Information, Google has been pitching its Tensor Processing Units to so-called neoclouds—specialist cloud firms that rent out AI computing power—in a bid to break into a market Nvidia has owned almost from end to end.The wrinkle is what happened next. The Information reports that Nvidia heard about Google's talks with one such provider, Nscale, and has since floated some financial sweeteners of its own. One person close to the situation said those incentives looked designed to make Nscale less keen on working with Google. Nscale's spokesperson pushed back hard, saying Nvidia offered the company no financial incentives in exchange for skipping TPUs.
Get smarter about the news
Sign up free for a feed built around what you actually care about, Dive Deeper research on any story, and the full text of every article.
Create free accountAlready have an account? Sign in