Morgan Stanley Sees $32.5B–60B AI-Driven CPU Market Expansion by 2030
Morgan Stanley forecasts that agentic AI will add $32.5–60 billion to the data-center CPU market by 2030, on top of the current $100 billion scale, as processing shifts from GPUs to general-purpose CPUs and memory. The note highlights that rising compute intensity and coordination demands will widen AI spending to CPU, memory and chipmaking firms.
1. Agentic AI Drives Compute Shift
Morgan Stanley argues that as AI systems evolve from prompt-response to autonomous action, the computing bottleneck moves from GPUs toward CPUs and memory, creating a step-change in demand for general-purpose processors in data centers.
2. Market Size Projections
The firm estimates that agentic AI could contribute an additional $32.5–60 billion to a data-center CPU market that already exceeds $100 billion by 2030, reflecting growing coordination and control workloads beyond raw graphics processing.
3. Identified Beneficiaries
Morgan Stanley names Nvidia, AMD, Intel and Arm as CPU and accelerator beneficiaries, Micron, Samsung and SK hynix in memory, and TSMC and ASML across chipmaking and equipment as the key winners of this expanded AI infrastructure spending.