I've been telling people for years that NVIDIA is actually a software company, but nobody ever listens. My argument is that their silicon is nothing special and could easily be replicated by others, and therefore their real value is in their driver+CUDA layer.

(Maybe "nothing special" is a little bit strong, but as a chip designer I've never seen the actual NVIDIA chips as all that much of a moat. What makes it hard to find alternatives to NVIDIA is their driver and CUDA stack.)

Curious to hear others' opinions on this.