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Introducing the AI Chip Owners Explorer
Brief
Epoch AI's AI Chip Owners explorer (launched 2026-04-06) maps who owns the world's leading AI chips by distributing previously estimated sales volumes (Nvidia, Google TPU, Amazon Trainium, AMD, Huawei) across major owners using analyst estimates, company disclosures, capex data, and frontier data-center analysis. The study finds US hyperscalers control over 70% of AI compute, led by Google (≈5 million H100-equivalents, ~25% of global compute) with Google TPUs contributing nearly 4 million H100-equivalents (CI 3.1M–4.5M). Mainland China holds just over 5% of cumulative compute as of end-2025; illicit imports may have added tens of thousands to >100,000 A100/H100s in 2024 per prior reports but are unlikely to close the gap. The explorer includes interactive visualizations, a methodology and dataset for researchers and policymakers.
Why it matters
Epoch AI's AI Chip Owners explorer (published 2026-04-06) estimates US hyperscalers (Amazon, Google/Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle) own over 70% of global AI compute, with Google leading the group.
Key details
- Google is estimated to hold the equivalent of ~5 million Nvidia H100 GPUs (~25% of global total) and nearly 4 million H100-equivalent TPU compute (confidence interval 3.1M–4.5M).
- Mainland Chinese customers are estimated to own just over 5% of cumulative leading-AI-chip compute as of end-2025; prior research (Grunewald & Fist) estimates >100,000 Nvidia A100/H100 units were illicitly shipped to China in 2024 (high uncertainty).
- The explorer builds on Epoch AI's AI Chip Sales dataset and allocates chips to owners using analyst estimates, company financial disclosures, capital spending, and frontier-scale data-center analysis; it also notes many frontier developers (e.g., OpenAI, Anthropic) rent most compute from hyperscalers.