Nvidia overtakes Qualcomm to become the biggest chip designer by revenue, which should give Jensen plenty to smile about

It may have escaped your notice, but word on the street is that Nvidia is doing rather well of late. Fourth quarter earnings released earlier this year revealed gigantic revenue and net income figures thanks to surging AI demand, and now a recent report from Trendforce shows that the company has overtaken Qualcomm to become the biggest chip designer by revenue, too.

The figures show that Nvidia raked in $55.268 billion in revenue in 2023, in contrast to the second biggest chip designer, Qualcomm, which managed $30.913 billion over the same period. That puts Nvidia firmly at the top of the table, beating out Broadcom, AMD, Mediatek and others by a substantial margin and leaving the company at an estimated market share of 33%, up 15% over the previous year.

Notable by their absence in these figures are Intel and Samsung, as the list doesn't seem to include chip makers with their own fabrication facilities. Presumably Intel will appear once the switch to its «internal foundry model» is complete, splitting the fabrication and design departments in the process.

Still, these figures are sure to put a smile on the face of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who has been busy announcing next-generation Blackwell AI GPUs that already seem to be flying off the racks,  and has even occasionally found the time to drop off the odd unit in person.

Nvidia is said to now have captured over 80% of the AI accelerator market thanks to strong sales of its H100 AI GPU, with revenue growth predicted to continue to rise into 2024 thanks to the new Blackwell chips. AMD's revenue meanwhile fell by 4% to $22.68 billion last year, with the slight stumble attributed to sluggish PC demand and inventory reduction.

While Nvidia appears to top the charts for now, it'll be interesting to see if Qualcomm can pull some of that lead back with sales of consumer chips. The company is said to be actively promoting the automotive market, and expects revenues in that sector to more than double by 2030.

As for AMD,