ASIC

An ASIC is a chip built for one job rather than for general-purpose flexibility — here, a specific AI workload, most often inference. It is the main structural alternative to the merchant GPU: instead of renting compute shaped by one dominant vendor, the largest buyers design their own silicon to fit exactly what they run. That matters now because hyperscalers are scaling custom inference parts precisely to control cost and to escape dependence on a single supplier's roadmap and pricing.

The catch is that a purpose-built chip only pays off if it is kept busy and well supported — poor utilization or a thin software stack can strand the whole investment, which is the model's caution on the category. As a substitute, ASICs reshape where value-chain power sits, pulling leverage back toward the buyer. The exposed names span in-house designers like Alphabet and the enablers that turn a specification into a shipping part — Alchip, Cambricon, Enflame, Socionext and MediaTek.