Would OpenAI be competing with them, though? If they just manufacture their own and use their own, but don't sell them, then nVidia and ARM are just losing a client, not getting competition.

Ideally what we would see is OpenAI investing in a new but independently operated chip manufacturer that makes chips to their standards. Though is it also possible that a chip of such standard would be so specialized that it wouldn't be usable by others? I'm not a hardware person, so that's a genuine question.

> If they just manufacture their own and use their own, but don't sell them, then nVidia and ARM are just losing a client, not getting competition.

That's competition. Apple Silicon completes with Intel at an ecosystem level.

I'm very hesitant to define competition as "can't sell to them because they make theirs in house". Losing a sale isn't competition. Competition is someone threatening to take your clientele from you with their own offering. Apple can afford to design and use its own chips, but they're in a pretty unique position to do so. It's not like every other consumer of their chips is going to say "hey, if it's that easy, I'll do it too".