PC Gamer is supported by its audience. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Learn more
By published
Nvidia is worth over $400B more than Intel, but is far from a match for its size.
We hear an awful lot about share price when it comes to comparisons between Intel, AMD, and Nvidia. It’s a news story when AMD is valued at more than Intel, as much as it is when Nvidia skyrockets to new heights of Wall Street wealth (opens in new tab). But when it gets down to who’s bigger than who, the perceived value of a company doesn’t equate to its actual size—that comes down to how many people they employ, revenue streams, the breadth of what they create, and market share.
Stellar financials are one thing, but people make the product; as Intel likes to say, «The ingredient we begin with is sand. Everything else is value added by people.» It’s true, though, and while a great measure of success is the value attributed to a company, there’s a lot more to say when it comes to the scope and size of a company.
That’s why I’ve dug into Intel, AMD, and Nvidia’s financials, reports, and corporate documents to see how these three companies actually align in 2022. If you’re purely a share price buff, you might be surprised. Though if you’re a long-term PC gamer with one eye on hardware, you could probably make a bet right now as to which company is actually the biggest with decent odds of it being correct.
Intel
Intel had 110,600 employees as of December 2020, a figure provided by Intel in its 2020–2021 corporate responsibility report (opens in new tab). Intel says roughly 90% of its staff are in technical positions. While we don’t have a 2021–2022 report as of yet, I would guess that the number of employees, especially those in technical positions, may have increased under the leadership of Intel’s current CEO, Pat Gelsinger. Gelsinger is himself an engineer, and has on numerous occasions championed technical expertise at Intel—a number of notable ex-Intel employees returned when Gelsinger took over.
AMD
AMD totals 12,600+ employees, according to its 2020–21 corporate responsibility report (opens in new tab), which offers us a pretty good ballpark figure to go off. Clearly, Intel’s staff numbers far exceed that of AMD, though we’re forgetting one thing: AMD closed on its Xilinx purchase in 2022; AMD gained around 5,000 employees, or just under, with that acquisition. That means AMD’s total headcount will be at least 17,000, if not higher, in 2022.
Nvidia
We’re at the whims of Nvidia’s strange corporate calendar for its headcount, meaning we’re awaiting its full-year 2022 report in a few months—Nvidia’s financial year is a year ahead of everyone else, and it doesn’t quite add up on a month-by-month basis, either.
For now, we have the 2021 report (opens in new tab) to go from, which says Nvidia has around 18,975 employees. It also recently expanded its headcount rapidly as the result of an acquisition—Nvidia purchased Mellanox in mid-2020, and you can see the major jump in its total employees as a result. In Nvidia’s FY20, it had 13,775 employees. By FY21, it has 18,975.
When discussing cashflow, Intel sets a mighty high bar. It raked-in $79 billion US dollars in its full-year 2021 period (which ends December 25, 2021), which was up just 1% on 2020’s $77.9B figure. A humongous load of cash, no doubt about that. Of that figure, around $19.9B of it was net profit.
AMD
AMD does us a big favour by also running its full-year 2021 until December 25, 2021, meaning it’s an apples to apples comparison with Intel for the period. AMD made $16.4B, which is near-enough five times less than Intel. Of that sum, $3.16B was profit. However, there is more to say on that. AMD’s full-year results for 2021 were up an absurd 68% year-over-year. The company made $9.8B in 2020. At that rate of growth, AMD would be nearly neck-and-neck with Intel in three years’ time.
Whether AMD can keep up this incredible trajectory is another matter. It’s a massive ask and the semiconductor biz is anything but consistent. That said, it’s definitely looking up for team red as it stands today.
Nvidia
Nvidia is a real Wall Street darling; its total market cap (its share value multiplied by its total outstanding shares) is by far the largest of the three at $614B (AMD sits at $166B and Intel at $193B). Though when you take a look at its actual revenue for a full-year period, it paints an entirely different picture.
For Nvidia’s fiscal year 2022—roughly equivalent to AMD and Intel’s full-year 2021, ending on January 30, 2021—the company made $26.9B in revenue. That’s up a stunning 61% year-over-year, beating full-year 2021’s total of $16.7B. Of that sum, $9.75B was net profit, which shows Nvidia runs a tight ship and makes a lot of cash from a fairly lean operation.
Like AMD, Nvidia has gained tremendously over the past year, and both companies make Intel’s 1% improvement during the period look rather paltry by comparison. Despite this, it is Intel that’s far ahead in overall revenue.
It’s also worth noting that Intel has the facilities to produce its own chips, and that’s a whole different ballgame to AMD and Nvidia. Both of which are fabless companies and reliant on the manufacturing capability of others to produce their chips. Of course, Intel does rely on other chipmakers, too—we’re largely talking about TSMC and Samsung here—but maintains a large chip fabrication presence globally.
I’m not going to list every product each company makes; I’d be here all year and it’d be wrong by the time I’d finished. Instead I’ll give a rough idea of the purview of each of these companies and their main products.
Intel
AMD
Nvidia
In terms of gaming market share, we can look to the Steam Hardware Survey for an idea. Just bear in mind that this isn’t the ideal metric to draw firm conclusions from; more of a rough idea of general trends.
Total CPU market share (Mercury Research – Q4, 2021)
Gaming (Steam Hardware Survey – March 2022)
Total dGPU market share (Jon Peddie Research – Q4 2021)
Gaming (Steam Hardware Survey – March 2022)
Market cap (as of April 2022)
Nvidia is clearly a company perceived to be more valuable than its competitors, though there are other factors to its success to consider. Share price valuation can fluctuate quite significantly due to events and circumstance that might not accurately reflect the real-life success or danger to a companies’ prosperity. While an interesting factor, and no doubt one of significant import to shareholders that may hold the keys to a company’s leadership, in the long-run we’ll have to see whether Nvidia’s share price dominance materialises as bigger numbers in its financial results, too. 
However, Nvidia and AMD remain strong competition despite their overall size and revenue discrepancies; the public appears to be well aware of this too, judging by each company’s market cap. Nvidia, especially, has been doing exceptionally well these past two years, and by at least the perception of its shareholders and the public would be considered the more successful of the three.
Best gaming motherboard (opens in new tab): The right boards
Best graphics card (opens in new tab): Your perfect pixel-pusher awaits
Best SSD for gaming (opens in new tab): Get into the game ahead of the rest
I would guess that Intel’s unique position among the three as the manufacturer of its own goods, and the recent interest from US and European leaders for that capability, will allow it to continue to lead the way in these key areas—even though it might not seem that way today with its far slower yearly growth. In a world of supply chain constraints and interglobal competition for chips, Intel is uniquely positioned to deliver what the others can’t, even if it hasn’t appeared to materialise many gains in that department over the past half decade or more.
Despite the competition, the future also looks at least partly co-operative for the big three. Intel’s IDM strategy puts it at the centre of a cross-continent pledge to increase domestic chipmaking, and that would likely see Intel less at odds with Nvidia and AMD, and more closely working with them. It’s not entirely unbelievable that we will one day see an AMD or Nvidia chip manufactured by Intel; though it would be quite odd to see all the same.
Jacob earned his first byline writing for his own tech blog from his hometown in Wales in 2017. From there, he graduated to professionally breaking things at PCGamesN, where he would later win command of the kit cupboard as hardware editor. Nowadays, as senior hardware editor at PC Gamer, he spends his days reporting on the latest developments in the technology and gaming industry. When he’s not writing about GPUs and CPUs, you’ll find him trying to get as far away from the modern world as possible by wild camping.
Sign up to get the best content of the week, and great gaming deals, as picked by the editors.
Thank you for signing up to PC Gamer. You will receive a verification email shortly.
There was a problem. Please refresh the page and try again.
PC Gamer is part of Future US Inc, an international media group and leading digital publisher. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab).
© Future US, Inc. Full 7th Floor, 130 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036.
