The Stack Grab: Nvidia's quest for dominance

THE STACK GRAB

How NVIDIA is buying its way further into the infrastructure of AI

by Charlie-Louise Akintilo

Picture this. Almost every major company is racing to build with AI. But underneath the apps, chatbots and new products we see every day sits the infrastructure that actually makes AI work.

NVIDIA is the company that makes much of that infrastructure.

In simple terms, it designs the incredibly powerful computer chips that companies like OpenAI, Microsoft, Amazon and thousands of others use to build and run AI. As demand for AI has exploded, NVIDIA has become one of the most important companies in the global economy.

But NVIDIA doesn’t just want to supply the engine powering the AI boom. Now it wants to own more of the road.

Its $12.9 billion deal to buy Hugging Face one of the most important platforms where AI developers find, share and choose the models and tools they build with would take NVIDIA much closer to the point where the next generation of AI products actually gets created.

And the scale matters. More than 18 million developers use Hugging Face, alongside more than 200,000 companies. That’s what makes this interesting.

Think of AI as a stack. At the bottom, you need enormous computing power to make AI work. NVIDIA already dominates much of that world through its chips. In the middle are the models, data and tools developers use to actually build AI. At the top are the products we see and use the assistants, apps and AI tools being sold to businesses and consumers.

NVIDIA already has a powerful position at the bottom. Buying Hugging Face gives it a much bigger position in the middle where millions of developers are deciding which models to use, what to experiment with and, ultimately, what gets built next.

Think of it like sport. Imagine owning one of the best teams in the league. That is already valuable. But then imagine owning the stadium, the technology the league runs on, the platform where fans watch the games and the system where the next generation of talent gets discovered. Suddenly, you are not betting on one team winning. You have built a position in the growth of the entire game. Call it The Stack Grab.

Own enough of the journey and you do not need to create every winning product yourself. You gain a position in the success of almost everything created around you. For founders and business leaders, the lesson is clear: building the product is only one part of the opportunity. The bigger prize may be owning the platform, community or distribution through which an entire market grows.