The XPU market reached $31 billion in 2025. Third-party custom silicon design could double by 2028 as enterprises diversify beyond GPUs.
The XPU market crossed $31 billion in 2025 according to Futurum Intelligence’s quarterly tracker, growing roughly 4× faster than the broader semiconductor market. That growth came almost entirely from the four hyperscalers’ captive programs — Microsoft Maia, Google TPU, AWS Trainium, and Meta MTIA — paired with their third-party design partners.
The interesting question for 2026-2028 is whether that growth stays concentrated in captive hyperscaler designs or expands to a long tail of enterprise XPU programs. Both Marvell and Broadcom believe it expands. Marvell’s recent XConn acquisition and NVLink Fusion announcement are direct bets on enterprise XPU demand — sovereign clouds, neoclouds, and verticalized AI specialists who want their own silicon.
If even a quarter of the Fortune 500 follows the hyperscaler playbook by 2028, the XPU market roughly doubles. That’s a $60 billion+ market by 2028 — a real second leg on top of the captive hyperscaler base.
Enterprises don’t need NVIDIA-class headcount or expertise to participate. They need a partner who can deliver IP-block-based design at predictable cost and timeline. Whether NVIDIA itself becomes that partner via NVLink Fusion or whether Marvell, Broadcom, and Synopsys carve out that role independently is the most interesting strategic question in semiconductors today.
