OpenAI’s Jalapeño chip is Big Tech’s spiciest move away from Nvidia

Nvidia has dominated the AI chip market for years, but the era of total dependence might be ending.  

OpenAI just shared its plans to spice things up with Jalapeño, its custom inference chip built with Broadcom, joining Google, Apple, and SpaceX in a growing list of companies building their way out of single-supplier risk. The goal is less of a clean break and more of a hedge. Custom silicon means more control, hardware tuned to specific needs, and the kind of performance gains Apple unlocked when it ditched Intel. 

On this episode of TechCrunch’s Equity podcast, hosts Kirsten Korosec, Anthony Ha, and Sean O’Kane dig into what the custom chip trend means for the industry and a few deals of the week worth watching. Listen to the full episode to hear more about: 

• How Groq’s $650M raise after Nvidia swept away its top talent might be the comeback story of the year 

• AI agents getting loopy and why Claude Code creator Boris Cherny thinks these loops are “just as important and as big a step” as the leap from source code to agents 

• Whether the public markets are warming up to humanoid robots as Agility Robotics plans to go public via SPAC 

• A24 taking investment from Google DeepMind to develop a new AI toolkit for filmmakers