The AIP zoo

180 creatures vying for your attention.

August 12, 2026

Jon Peddie

With 10 processor families and 180 companies chasing design wins, no single architecture will win outright. GPUs anchor large-scale training, NPUs and CIM chips push inference to the edge, dataflow and analog designs chase efficiency, and RISC-V gives silicon teams a customizable foundation. For ISVs and CIOs, the real work ahead is matching each workload to the right architecture, not betting on a single winner. When we began our AI processor information system tracker service in mid-2025, we thought it would be fairly easy—just find who was making an NPU, HW, or IP. To our surprise, we found 53 companies—53!

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The AIP zoo

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