[smoldesu]

It doesn't necessarily depend on Nvidia hardware. Nothing stops you from training an AI on an adequately advanced ASIC or FPGA, in theory. Nvidia does accelerate it though, and they're also offering unparalleled performance-per-dollar to the audience that's in the market.

In a way, it feels like Nvidia is embarrassingly aware of this. They were the reluctant shovel salesman during the cryptocurrency gold rush, and they're rightfully wary of going all-in on AI. If I was an investor, I'd also be quantifying just how much of a "greatest technological advancement" modern machine learning really is.

[noogle]

It's the ecosystem - everyone else is using CUDA, so you need a very good incentive to stray away from that ecosystem. a x2-3 cost of hardware won't justify such move.

The cryptomarket was less favorable to Nvidia because it harmed the loyal customers (gamers, AI) for a temporary market (crypto) that indeed largely declined.