A new front is opening in the artificial intelligence buildout, with the world's largest technology companies competing over the processors that will run "agentic" AI — software designed to act on tasks rather than just answer questions.
According to 조선일보 (Chosun Ilbo), reported via Google News, Big Tech is now locked in a race over the CPUs that power this next wave of agentic AI. The framing signals that the contest extends beyond the graphics chips that have dominated AI headlines and into the broader mix of silicon needed to support increasingly autonomous systems.
Meanwhile, the company that has defined the AI hardware era is widening its lead in a new direction. According to a report carried on MSN (via Bing News), Nvidia has spent the last few years ruling the AI accelerator market — but it has now gone further. The report states that Nvidia became the world's biggest data center Ethernet switching vendor by revenue in the first quarter of 2026.
That detail matters because it shows Nvidia expanding from chips into the networking gear that ties data center hardware together. The MSN piece presents the milestone as a fresh reason for investors to buy Nvidia (NVDA) stock, suggesting the company's reach across the AI stack is becoming a core part of its market story.
Together, the two reports sketch a picture of an industry contest that is broadening: from the accelerators everyone already knows about, to the CPUs behind agentic AI, to the switching equipment that moves data inside the world's largest computing facilities.
Why it matters: control over the full hardware stack — not just one marquee chip — is becoming the battleground that decides who profits most from the agentic AI era.