The Race to Dominate AI Is Turning the Global Chip Industry Into an Economic Arms Race
The people selling the picks and shovels are starting to run the AI gold rush. Chips, memory, and data centers are becoming some of the most valuable pieces of the tech economy, with companies and governments racing to secure supply. The scale of the buildout is now starting to rival the biggest investment waves of the internet era.
Ground zero: The fight for AI infrastructure is going global. NvidiaNVDA CEO Jensen Huang said the firm plans to increase annual spending in Taiwan from $10B–$15B four years ago to as much as $150B. The company is also building a new campus called Constellation that will house 4K employees by 2030, four times its current local workforce. Huang called Taiwan “the epicenter of the AI revolution” as Nvidia deepens its ties to the island’s manufacturing ecosystem.
- Taiwan’s Taiex index rose 1.7% to a record high after the announcement, with key Nvidia partners like TSMCTSM rallying across the supply chain.
- Nvidia’s planned $150B annual spend in Taiwan is larger than the company’s most recent quarterly revenue of $81.6B and well above its current-quarter forecast of $91B.
Memory’s Second Wind
AI’s next wave of winners is coming from the memory side of chips. SK Hynix, Samsung Electronics, and Micron TechnologyMU have become essential to the AI server boom. According to Counterpoint Research, SK Hynix controlled 57% of the global HBM market by revenue in Q4 2025, while Samsung held 22% and Micron accounted for 21%. Bloomberg called the trio “the chokepoint of the global AI buildout,” with shortages expected to constrain data center expansion through 2027.
- SK Hynix and Micron both crossed the $1T market cap mark this week, with the former up over 1,000% in the past year and Micron climbing ~830% as investors pile into AI memory.
- Competition is also rising as China’s ChangXin Memory Technologies moves toward a Shanghai listing after a 17-fold profit jump, supplying AlibabaBABA and TencentTCEHY.
Mixed feelings: HSBC global CIO Willem Sels argues AI may still be “underhyped,” a view reflected in how cheap many memory stocks still trade comparatively. The Roundhill Memory ETFDRAM trades at 8.2x 2026 earnings versus 27.7x for the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector ETFIGV, according to FactSet. VanEck CEO Jan Van Eck disagrees, warning the memory-chip surge already “feels bubblish” as pricing power may eventually fade.