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Vertical Integration Returns: Apple, Amazon, Google and Meta

Published · 14 min

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Apple designs its own Mac and iPhone chips. Amazon designs the chip that trains its AI. Google designs the chip its AI runs on. Meta designs the chip that ranks your feed. All four have, in the last six years, taken chip design back in-house — reversing a lesson the computer industry spent the 1990s learning the hard way: that buying from a specialist beats building it yourself.

This video traces that reversal from the start. In the 1980s, IBM and its rivals — the 'BUNCH': Burroughs, Univac, NCR, Control Data and Honeywell — mostly designed and built their own chips. That changed when Morris Chang founded TSMC in February 1987, the first dedicated foundry, splitting chip design from chip manufacturing and making the 'fabless' model cheap enough to win. By the 2000s, owning a fab was the exception, and IBM itself finally gave up its own chip factories in 2015.

Then Apple broke the pattern. On 10 November 2020 it unveiled the M1, ending fifteen years of buying from Intel, and claimed — in its own words — 'the world's best CPU performance per watt.' Apple could do it because it sells hundreds of millions of devices a year and controls the software running on every one.

The bigger fight now is over AI accelerators, where one industry estimate puts Nvidia's share above 90% — an estimate, not an audited figure. Meta answered on 11 March 2026 with four new MTIA chips (300 to 500), built on RISC-V and fabricated by TSMC, already running 'hundreds of thousands' deployed, in Meta's own words. Google added a second chip-design partner, Marvell, on 19 August 2026, alongside its existing Broadcom deal. And AWS made Trainium3 — its first 3-nanometre chip — generally available on 2 December 2025, with a 4.4x UltraServer performance claim that is AWS's own figure.

None of these four companies owns a chip factory. Every one of their designs still goes to a foundry, chiefly TSMC in Hsinchu, Taiwan, to be built. The video closes by weighing whether that makes this the same expensive mistake the 1990s already punished, or a genuinely different trade now that AI chips and scale have changed the economics — and does not pick a winner.

Educational documentary. Not financial or investment advice.

Chapters

  1. The question
  2. When everyone built everything
  3. The specialist era begins
  4. The lesson everyone learned
  5. Apple breaks ranks
  6. Why Apple could do it
  7. The AI accelerator problem
  8. Meta goes its own way
  9. Google diversifies beyond Broadcom
  10. Amazon's Trainium bet
  11. Same move, different economics
  12. Have they re-learned the lesson, or changed the game

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Sources and credits

Photo credits (Wikimedia Commons)

Primary sources

  • Apple Newsroom, 'Apple unveils M1, the most powerful chip Apple has ever built,' 10 Nov 2020 (apple.com/uk/newsroom) - the M1 launch date, the 15-year Intel run ending, and the exact quote 'the world's best CPU performance per watt.' Re-.
  • Wikipedia, 'IBM Microelectronics' - IBM's chip division organised 1966, East Fishkill/Essex Junction plants, and the 2015 sale to GlobalFoundries with $1.5bn cash. General reference, cross-checked against Computer History Museum catalogue entries.
  • Britannica, 'Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co.'; Quartr, 'The Silicon Empire: TSMC's Revolution and Morris Chang's Legacy' - TSMC incorporated Feb 1987 in Hsinchu, founded by Morris Chang, the first dedicated foundry model.
  • Meta AI Blog, 'Scaling AI chips for billions,' 11 Mar 2026 (ai.meta.com/blog) - the MTIA 300/400/450/500 announcement, RISC-V, TSMC fabrication, and the exact quote on chips already deployed. Re-.
  • Reuters, as reported by Tom's Hardware and The Register, 12 Mar 2026 - Broadcom's role in MTIA chip design, attributed to Reuters's reporting, not Meta's own statement.
  • Marvell Technology, Form 8-K, SEC filing, 19 Aug 2026; Futurum Group, 'Marvell Attaches Across Google's TPU Stack With a Warrant Vesting Toward $120B,' Aug 2026; Finviz/Reuters coverage - the Google-Marvell custom-chip deal and the ~$12.2bn warrant.
  • AWS News Blog / re:Invent 2025 keynote coverage (TechCrunch, SiliconANGLE), 2-3 Dec 2025; AWS Trainium product page, Dec 2025 - Trainium3's 3nm process and the 4.4x UltraServer performance figure, AWS's own comparison.
  • Introl, 'The Custom Silicon Inflection Point: Hyperscaler ASICs Challenge NVIDIA's GPU Dominance in 2026,' Feb 2026.

Note: Nvidia's market-share figure and the 'hundreds of millions of devices' scale claim are both estimates/general framing, not audited counts.

Not regulated financial advice.