Nvidia has earned its $2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence chips that have become the lifeblood of developers driving a new era of generative AI, from startups to Microsoft, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet.
Almost as important as its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years of computer code, which makes competing with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million developers worldwide rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other applications.
Now, a coalition of tech companies including Qualcomm, Google and Intel plan to loosen Nvidia’s stranglehold by vying for its secret sauce: software that keeps developers connected to its chips. They are part of a growing group of financiers and companies that are chipping away at Nvidia’s dominance in artificial intelligence.
“We’re actually showing developers how to migrate away from the Nvidia platform,” Vinesh Sukumar, Qualcomm’s head of artificial intelligence and machine learning, told Reuters in an interview.
Starting with a technology developed by Intel called OneAPI, the UXL Foundation, a consortium of tech companies, plans to build a suite of software and tools capable of powering multiple types of artificial intelligence accelerator chips, executives involved in the group told Reuters . This open source project aims to make computer code run on any machine, regardless of the chip and hardware it uses.
“Specifically, in the context of machine learning frameworks, how do we create an open ecosystem and improve the productivity and choice of hardware,” Bill Magro, director of high-performance computing and chief technologist at Google, told Reuters in an interview. Magro said Google is a founding member of UXL and helps determine the project’s technical direction.
UXL’s technical steering committee is preparing to finalize technical specifications in the first half of this year. Engineers plan to refine the technical details to a “mature” state by the end of the year, executives said. The executives emphasized the need to build a solid foundation that includes contributions from multiple companies that can also be deployed on any chip or hardware.
In addition to the initial companies participating, UXL will also attract cloud computing companies such as Amazon.com and Microsoft Azure, as well as other chip manufacturers.
Since its launch in September, UXL has begun to receive technical contributions from third parties, including foundation members and outsiders keen to use open source technology, executives said. Intel’s OneAPI is already available, and the second step is to create a standard computing programming model designed for AI.
UXL plans to devote its resources to solving the most pressing computing problems dominated by a handful of chipmakers, such as the latest artificial intelligence applications and high-performance computing applications. These early plans are in line with the organization’s long-term goal of gaining a sufficient number of developers to use its platform.
In the long term, UXL is ultimately intended to support Nvidia hardware and code.
Asked about open source and venture capital software efforts to disrupt Nvidia’s AI dominance, Nvidia executive Ian Buck said in a statement: “The world is accelerating. New ideas for accelerated computing are coming from across the ecosystem and will Helping advance the scope of what artificial intelligence and accelerated computing can achieve.”
On Monday, Nvidia shares rose 0.8% to close at $950.02.
Nearly 100 startups
The UXL Foundation’s plan is one of many efforts to weaken Nvidia’s control over artificial intelligence software. Venture capitalists and corporate money have invested more than $4 billion in 93 separate projects, according to custom data compiled by PitchBook requested by Reuters.
Interest in replacing Nvidia over potential weaknesses in software grew last year, with startups aiming to exploit holes in the company’s leadership investing slightly more than $2 billion in 2023, data showed, up from $2 billion a year ago. $580 million. From PitchBook.
The success achieved in the shadow of Nvidia’s AI data-crunching team is something few startups can achieve. Nvidia’s CUDA is a compelling piece of software on paper because it’s fully featured and continues to evolve with Nvidia’s contributions and the help of the developer community.
“But that’s not really what matters,” said Jay Goldberg, CEO of D2D Advisory, a financial and strategy consulting firm. “What’s important is that people have been using CUDA for 15 years and they’ve built code around it.”
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