Last updated Nov 29, 2025
Prediction
Chamath
Chamath @ 00:11:37Inconclusive
marketstechai
Within the next several years (by ~2026–2027), competitive entry in AI accelerators (custom chips from hyperscalers, Tesla Dojo, RISC‑V, etc.) will materially erode Nvidia’s profit margins and reduce its upside earnings growth relative to the levels implied by its 2023 results.
so it probably just motivates them even more and accelerates the path where you see competition... and I think we're going to have to figure out when the market prices that in, because I think that that probably decays the Nvidia margin and upside over time.View on YouTube
Explanation

Based on data available up to 30 Nov 2025, it is too early to definitively judge this multi‑year prediction, whose horizon explicitly runs out to around 2026–2027.

1. What Chamath predicted (Aug 2023)
He argued that Nvidia’s huge AI success would motivate and accelerate competition (custom hyperscaler chips, Tesla Dojo, alternatives like RISC‑V, etc.), and that once “priced in,” this would decay Nvidia’s margin and upside over time (i.e., meaningfully erode its profit margins and reduce upside earnings growth relative to what 2023 results implied).

2. Nvidia’s margins & earnings through 2025
Public filings and coverage for FY2024–FY2025 show:

  • Nvidia’s data center revenue and earnings have exploded since 2023, and its overall gross margin has expanded, not contracted, through 2024–2025 as high‑end AI accelerators (H100, B100, etc.) have enjoyed extreme pricing power.
  • For example, Nvidia reported very high gross margins in 2024 and 2025 on the back of AI GPU demand; commentary from analysts repeatedly notes sustained or improving margins, not a material erosion attributable to competitors during this period.

So far, Nvidia’s profitability has remained exceptionally strong; any future erosion implied by the prediction has not clearly manifested yet, at least not in the financial statements up to late 2025.

3. Competitive entry is clearly accelerating

  • Hyperscalers (Google TPU, AWS Trainium/Inferentia, Microsoft custom AI chips, Meta in‑house accelerators) have all ramped custom silicon programs and begun wider deployment in 2024–2025, widely reported as part of a strategy to reduce dependence on Nvidia and control AI infrastructure costs.
  • AMD’s MI300 series and successors, plus other accelerator vendors, are being positioned as alternative AI compute platforms.
  • Tesla continues to invest in Dojo as a custom training supercomputer for autonomy and related AI workloads.

This confirms the first part of the thesis: competitive entry is indeed accelerating.

4. But the outcome (margin/earnings erosion) is not yet observable
Chamath’s core, falsifiable claim is not just that competition appears, but that it will materially decay Nvidia’s margins and upside earnings growth compared to what its 2023 boom implied, over several years.

As of late 2025:

  • Nvidia still commands a dominant market share in high‑end AI accelerators and continues to post extraordinary revenue and profit growth.
  • Any longer‑term impact from hyperscaler in‑house chips, AMD/Intel competition, or alternative architectures on Nvidia’s pricing power and structural margins is speculative; financial results so far do not yet show the clear margin compression his comment envisioned.
  • Since his timeline runs out to roughly 2026–2027, the most decisive test period has not fully occurred yet.

Because:

  1. The competitive dynamics he anticipated are emerging (supporting his intuition), but
  2. Nvidia’s margins and upside earnings have not yet clearly decayed in the way the prediction ultimately asserts, and
  3. The explicit time frame ("over the next several years" out to ~2026–2027) has not elapsed,

we cannot fairly label the prediction as right or wrong as of 30 Nov 2025.

Conclusion
The prediction’s evaluation window is still open, and the key outcome (sustained, material erosion of Nvidia’s profit margins and upside earnings growth due to competition) has not yet clearly occurred or been refuted in the financial data. Therefore the correct status today is "inconclusive (too early)".