OpenAI’s newest model just gave Wall Street a fresh reason to debate which chipmakers actually win in the AI race. Jim Cramer weighed in with a clear answer on live television.
His picks reflect two very different roles the same handful of companies now play in building and running the biggest AI models on the planet.
Cramer names Nvidia and Broadcom as GPT-6 Astra’s biggest winners
Jim Cramer identified Nvidia and Broadcom as the two stocks most likely to benefit from OpenAI’s rollout of its GPT-6 Astra model, making the call on CNBC’s “Morning Meeting” on Sept. 8, CNBC reported.
Nvidia’s role centers on training. Astra was built using roughly 100,000 Nvidia Grace Blackwell NVLink72 systems, according to CEO Jensen Huang, who also posted on X (the former Twitter) that another 400,000 chips are being brought online.
Cramer read the figure as a genuine demand signal rather than simply a one-time order, according to Huang’s post.
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Cramer made his preference plain. “The stock that I think you should be buying is Nvidia,” he said, according to CNBC. “It didn’t do anything wrong at all. If anything, it’s doing the right thing. It’s the reason why OpenAI is doing so well.”
The market split on the two calls that same day. Nvidia shares fell almost 2% to $225.80 during the Sept. 8 session, while Broadcom gained nearly 3% to close at $368.17, CNBC reported.
Broadcom’s Jalapeno chip tells a different story
Broadcom’s connection to Astra runs through inference rather than training. The company developed a custom chip called Jalapeno with OpenAI, designed specifically for the day-to-day work of running finished models rather than building them.
Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes wrote that Astra’s strong reception should improve OpenAI’s odds of a successful 2027 IPO.
Cramer has not always been convinced Jalapeno poses a real threat to Nvidia. Responding to OpenAI’s own benchmark claims about the chip weeks earlier, he dismissed the challenge as “big hat, no cattle,” arguing the real barrier facing any rival chip is displacing customers already embedded in Nvidia’s ecosystem, TheStreet reported.
OpenAI has claimed real performance gains from the chip regardless. The company said Jalapeno delivers 1.5 to 1.9 times more AI work per watt than systems built on Nvidia’s GB200 and GB300 chips, along with meaningfully lower latency across several benchmark models, CNBC reported.
Broadcom’s customer rankings show why Wall Street is watching the relationship closely. CEO Hock Tan has said Anthropic is set to overtake Google as Broadcom’s largest XPU customer in 2027 and hold that position through 2028, with OpenAI expected to rank second among Broadcom’s custom silicon clients that same year, according to CNBC.
Broadcom’s own numbers back up the bull case
Broadcom’s most recent earnings report gave investors a mixed reaction, despite strong underlying growth. AI chip revenue more than tripled year over year to $16.7 billion in the fiscal third quarter, yet shares still slid after Q4 guidance of $21.7 billion came in below the $22 to $23 billion analysts had been projecting.
Tan told investors AI semiconductor revenue should hit $115 billion in fiscal 2027 and roughly double again to $230 billion in fiscal 2028. He also said actual customer demand already exceeds those targets. Supply, not orders, is what is constraining growth right now, according to CNBC.
The gigawatt figures behind those targets are specific. Anthropic plans to deploy 5 gigawatts of Broadcom TPU 8i-designed chips in 2027 and another 10 gigawatts in 2028, while OpenAI is expected to deploy 1.3 gigawatts of Jalapeno capacity in 2027, CNBC reported.
Not every analyst brushed off the risks in Tan’s comments. KeyBanc’s John Vinh kept an Overweight rating on Broadcom but flagged the chance that Google could shift more of its own chip business toward MediaTek-based silicon, naming Nvidia as his preferred stock in the group instead.
What it means for chip investors
Cramer also holds Intel and Micron in his charitable trust alongside Nvidia and Broadcom. Four chip stocks. He is not picking one winner. He is spread across the stack because he thinks the whole wave is real, not just one corner of it.
That view carries real weight for anyone holding these stocks, since so much of the bull case still runs through one customer’s fortunes. OpenAI’s enormous infrastructure commitments have made investors sensitive to its competitive standing against Anthropic and open-source rivals, given how directly the lab’s ability to keep raising capital depends on staying near the frontier of AI research.
Nvidia fell 2% on the same day Broadcom gained 3%. Same customer. Same model launch. Opposite stock moves.
That is the part of this trade most investors do not think about until it happens to them. Being right about the AI buildout does not tell you which supplier in the stack gets paid first.
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