CPUs become a new front in the AI chip race

The AI boom is turning CPUs into a major growth market after years of being viewed as a mature server component. Executives and research firms expect CPUs used in next-generation AI data centers to grow more than 40% annually over the next five years, surpassing USD 220 billion by 2030, as workloads shift from training toward reasoning, inference and agentic AI.

CPU demand is rising because orchestration tasks for AI agents are sequential and latency-sensitive, making them better suited to CPUs than accelerator chips. Bernstein Research estimates the data center CPU market will expand from just USD 37 billion in 2025 to USD 223 billion by 2030, while Bank of America expects more than USD 170 billion by 2030.

The opportunity is drawing Nvidia, Qualcomm, MediaTek, Arm, Google, Amazon and Microsoft into a market still led by Intel and AMD. Arm-based designs are gaining ground for energy efficiency, while x86 processors remain strong in complex computing tasks. China is also pushing domestic alternatives, with Hygon expected by Bernstein to grow from about 20% of China’s server CPU market this year to roughly 35% by 2028.