Nvidia’s ‘AI Factory’ narrative faces reality check as inference wars expose 70% margins

The gloves came off at Tuesday at VB Transform 2025 as alternative chip makers directly challenged Nvidia’s dominance narrative during a panel about inference, exposing a fundamental contradiction: How can AI inference be a commoditized “factory” and command 70% gross margins?

Jonathan Ross, CEO of Groq, didn’t mince words when discussing Nvidia’s carefully crafted messaging. “AI factory is just a marketing way to make AI sound less scary,” Ross said during the panel. Sean Lie, CTO of Cerebras, a competitor, was equally direct: “I don’t think Nvidia minds having all of the service providers fighting it out for every last penny while they’re sitting there comfortable with 70 points.”

Hundreds of billions in infrastructure investment and the future architecture of enterprise AI are at stake. For CISOs and AI leaders currently locked in weekly negotiations with OpenAI and other providers for more capacity, the panel ...