Nvidia Expected to Take the Lead as the Largest Semiconductor Company in 2023

Semiconductor Intelligence (SC-IQ) estimates $NVIDIA(NVDA.US)$ to surpass Intel as the largest semiconductor company in 2023, with a projected total revenue of $52.9 billion compared to $Intel(INTC.US)$'s projected $51.6 billion.This is largely due to Nvidia's strong performance in artificial intelligence processors, which is expected to double its 2022 revenue. While Intel has held the top position for most of the last twenty-one years, Samsung briefly took the lead in 2017, 2018, and 2021.

In 2023, the top ten companies in the semiconductor industry are all established players with at least 30 years of business experience, despite the rapid advancements and emergence of new startups. The youngest among them is Nvidia, which will be celebrating its 30th anniversary that year. At number four is $Broadcom(AVGO.US)$ Inc., which was formed through the merger of Avago Technologies and Broadcom Corporation in 2015. However, the original Broadcom Corporation was founded 32 years ago. Avago Technologies itself is a spin-off from Hewlett-Packard, which has been involved in the semiconductor business for 52 years.

The semiconductor industry's relative stability is evident from a comparison of the market shares of the top ten companies in 1984 and those projected for 2023. In 1984, $Texas Instruments(TXN.US)$ (TI) held the largest share at 9.3%, while Nvidia is expected to have the largest share in 2023 at around 10.6%. The combined market share of the top ten companies was 63% in 1984, which will drop slightly to about 62% in 2023. Despite the top companies' stability, the industry has experienced tremendous growth over these years, with the total market size increasing almost twenty-fold from $26 billion in 1984 to $500 billion in 2023.