Artificial intelligence is transforming industries and creating vast new fortunes. But behind every chatbot, image generator and AI model is a physical product: a semiconductor chip. We trace the global supply chain powering the AI revolution. From the companies designing the world&#x27;s most advanced chips, to the factories manufacturing them, and the specialist machines needed to produce them, we examine who is profiting from the surge in demand. We also explore why so much of the world&#x27;s most advanced chip production is concentrated in one place, Taiwan, and what that means for the global economy at a time of growing tensions between China and the West. As governments compete for technological leadership and businesses spend billions on AI infrastructure, we ask a simple question: who is getting rich from the AI boom, and what happens if the supply chain breaks? Presenter: Sam Fenwick Producer: David Cann (Photo: Holographic robot arms making semiconductor Credit:Yuichiro Chino / Getty Images)

Follow the money: The chips powering AI

Business Daily

The familiar sound of a computer booting up. You're probably near one right now. A phone in your hand, a laptop open in front of you. Switch it on and somewhere inside a small piece of silicon starts doing sums, billions of them, every second. You've never seen it but it's the reason the thing in front of you works.

And this is that sound scaled up. A room full of machines, rows of them running hot, kept alive by fans that never stop. I'm standing in one right now at the BBC and it's quite cool in here. This is the noise behind the AI boom, behind every answer from ChatGPT, every image, every model that runs on chips, tens of thousands of them.

I'm Sam Fenwick and this is Business Daily from the BBC World Service. The chip industry is one of the fastest growing on Earth. This year it's heading for a trillion dollars in sales. So today we're following the money from the company that designs the chip, to the factory that builds it, to the one machine that makes it possible and the island the whole thing depends on.

This is the chip inside the AI boom. Who's getting rich off it and who's paying the bill? AI seems to be everywhere at the moment, from designing new medicines to forecasting the weather and driving autonomous cars. What it seems capable of is mind blowing. You might think of it as software, something that lives on a screen, a chat bot, an app, an answer that appears out of nowhere.

Follow the money: The chips powering AI

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.

Follow the money: The chips powering AI

Read the full transcript

The candid version is on a podcast, not the earnings call.

The candid version is on a podcast,
not the earnings call.