The artificial intelligence revolution is fully underway, but soaring demand for its most crucial component has startups scratching their heads on how they can deliver on AI's promise.

Generative AI's lifeblood is a book-sized semiconductor known as the graphics processing unit (GPU) — built by one company, Nvidia.

Nvidia's CEO and founder Jensen Huang made a wild bet years ago that the world would soon clamor for a powerful chip usually used for making video games, but that could build AI as well.