Meta Platforms' (META -0.31%) artificial intelligence (AI) Muse agents have taken the world by storm. After being introduced just last month, Muse already has roughly 2 million daily active users as of Oct. 5 and sits atop the most downloaded apps on Apple's (AAPL -1.11%) App Store. With consumer, enterprise, and small-business AI agents, the agentic AI market is set to explode.
But before AI agents take over the world, they will need many more central processing units (CPUs) to power them. While graphics processing units (GPUs) are used to train AI models and run inference, what they are not good at is providing the sequential logic required by AI agents.
That is where server CPUs come in. As such, the ratio of GPUs to CPUs is expected to drop from 8:1 for AI model training and 4:1 for inference to 1:1 for servers dedicated to AI agents.
Image source: Getty Images.
As a result, Bank of America has projected that the data center CPU market will grow from around $61.4 billion this year to $210.6 billion in 2030. That is pretty consistent with the $220 billion projections that both Nvidia (NVDA -0.52%) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD -2.03%) have placed on the server CPU market.
Let's look at the four semiconductor stocks set to benefit the most from the agentic AI uprising.
1. Arm Holdings
The company set to benefit most from the rise of agentic AI and the surge in server CPU demand is arguably Arm Holdings (ARM -3.27%). It derives revenue from the server CPU market in two ways. First, it provides the IP (intellectual property) through licensing and subscriptions for nearly all custom CPUs. Meanwhile, earlier this year, it announced it would start making its own server CPUs for the first time.
NASDAQ: ARM
Key Data Points
Bank of America projects that custom Arm-based chips can capture nearly 38% of the server CPU market in 2030, while Arm's new mass-market chip will take a 9.4% market share.
On the downside, the company is also highly tied to the smartphone market, which is seeing unit declines due to price increases related to higher component costs, specifically memory. However, its server CPU market should more than make up for this.
2. AMD
AMD is one of the leaders in the server CPU market, having consistently taken share from rival Intel (AMD -2.03%) over the past few years. The company has already designed high-performance CPUs with high core counts specifically for agentic AI workloads and looks well-positioned to continue taking market share.
NASDAQ: AMD
Key Data Points
While the company has said it is looking to capture a 50% market share, Bank of America estimates AMD's market share will climb from 27.7% this year to 30.7% in 2030.
AMD also has a big opportunity in AI inference with its GPUs, which should be a second big growth driver.
3. Intel
Intel (INTC -2.22%) is the current market share leader in the data center CPU space with an over 40% share in 2025. As such, it has seen a sudden burst of revenue growth, given that the market is supply-constrained. This has allowed it to sell older-generation CPUs and also raise prices.
NASDAQ: INTC
Key Data Points
However, Bank of America projects that its market share will drop to around 22% by 2030. It also has a money-losing foundry business that has been like a weight around the company's neck. After some huge gains this year, Intel is my least favorite way to play the current CPU megatrend.
4. Nvidia
While best known for its GPUs, Nvidia has also developed its own Arm-based CPUs. It sells these as stand-alone chips, packaged with its GPUs, and as parts of entire server racks.
While this positions Nvidia to get its fair share of this booming market, its GPU revenue ultimately overwhelms its CPU opportunity. Expect GPUs and complete end-to-end server systems to be the main drivers of the company's growth moving forward. It's still a great stock, but just one that benefits a little less from this opportunity, given the difference in size between the GPU and CPU markets.
