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Nvidia (NVDA) stock is back in the green today after a week of struggling amid rising market headwinds.
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As NVDA has trended chiefly downward throughout December, experts have highlighted the threat of rising competition from other chipmakers and the possibility that AI spending may be slowing down as likely culprits pushing Nvidia into a correction period.
While shares are rising again today, as of this writing, they are currently down almost 3% for the month, hinting at a lackluster end to a year of significant growth.
Whether or not AI spending will slow down enough to impact Nvidia remains to be seen. However, one tech consultancy firm just released a report on the companies it estimates are buying the most chips from Nvidia. The list includes some prominent tech sector names, but it also features some companies that might not seem like likely top AI-chip buyers.
Nvidia customers include these companies, analysts think
The analyst team behind the Nvidia chip buyer list is part of Omdia, a global technology consultancy firm. According to a recent report from The Financial Times, “Omdia analyses companies’ publicly disclosed capital spending, server shipments, and supply chain intelligence to calculate its estimates.”
Related: Ongoing problem may be costing Nvidia customers
In this case, analysts analyzed which companies appear to be buying the most Nvidia Hopper graphics processing units (GPUs), a popular chip commonly used in data center infrastructure. It is important to note that the numbers listed in the list of top AI-chip buyers cited by the outlet are estimates, not actual order statistics provided by Nvidia.
According to Omdia’s analysts, Microsoft (MSFT) ordered more Nvidia Hopper chips than any other tech company in 2024, with an estimated total of 485,000. That’s more than double the order of the second U.S. company on the list, Meta Platforms (META) , which is estimated to have ordered 224,000 chips.
However, between these Silicon Valley leaders are two prominent international tech companies based in China.
Related: Major Apple chip supplier is expanding into the U.S.
TikTok parent ByteDance, a privately held corporation, ranks behind Microsoft with estimated chip orders of 230,000, while tech conglomerate Tencent Holdings TCEHY is directly behind with a slightly smaller order close to the 230,000 range.
The Financial Times adds that both ByteDance and Tencent’s Nvidia chip orders in 2024 included the H20 model, described as “a less powerful version of Hopper that was modified to meet US export controls for Chinese customers.”