It was the best of times, it was the worst of times for hardware companies. For a handful of hardware companies, 2024 was a tough year. Intel, Dell, AMD, IBM jointly cut more than 23,000 jobs this year.

Intel alone slashed 15,000 positions as it targeted $10 billion in cost savings by 2025. The PC market continues to struggle as does the copier market, which played a role in Xerox’s 3,000 cuts.

NVIDIA’s AI dominance

Meanwhile, NVIDIA is still thriving. Its data center revenue, which includes both hardware and associated software/services, was up 154% year-over-year in Q2 2025. The company achieved record financial performance in fiscal year (FY) 2024, with annual revenue hitting $60.9 billion, a 126% increase from the prior year thanks to burgeoning demand in its data center segment.

It’s not enough to focus just on hardware these days. While hardware has remained in the company’s DNA since its founding in the early 1990s, half of the company’s engineers now focus on software development.

And software development has become more than just support for hardware – NVIDIA uses its own GPUs and software stack to design next-generation chips, creating a virtuous cycle where AI accelerates chip development while demanding more chips. NVIDIA’s CUDA platform and AI Enterprise suite have become as vital as its chips. This software advantage helps explain why NVIDIA commands over 80% of the AI chip market, with its data center segment alone generating $26.3 billion in Q2 2024 — more than AMD’s projected $5 billion in AI chip revenue for the entire year.

The gap between AI leaders and followers is stark. NVIDIA closed fiscal year 2024 with $60.9 billion in revenue, up 126% year-over-year, while AMD posted more modest growth of 10.3%, reaching approximately $25 billion.

Other AI winners

The hardware sector’s AI-driven transformation extends beyond NVIDIA. Palantir Technologies, specializing in AI software and infrastructure, reported 30% year-over-year revenue growth in Q3 2024. AI infrastructure startup Scale AI saw its valuation surge to $14 billion following investments from tech giants Amazon and Meta, while AI search firm Perplexity AI tripled its valuation in 2024 to $9 billion (projected valuation as of November).

More big cuts at Big Tech

Speaking of Amazon and Meta, both had significant job cuts as well in 2024. Meta’s “Year of Efficiency” continued into this year, with a major reduction of 10,000 employees in March, followed by targeted cuts affecting around 100 employees across Instagram, WhatsApp, and Reality Labs in October.

Amazon’s restructuring touched multiple divisions throughout 2024, beginning with cuts in Prime Video and MGM Studios in January. The company followed with 9,000 layoffs across AWS, advertising, and Twitch in March, additional reductions in AWS’s sales and marketing teams in April, and customer service management cuts in May. By year’s end, Amazon’s entertainment division faced uncertainty with the phasing out of its Freevee streaming service.
Similarly, Google also downsized in 2024 starting with shedding 1,000 positions in core engineering and Google Assistant in January. The company further trimmed its workforce in May with 200 cuts from its “core” team, while shifting some roles to Mexico and India. June saw additional cuts in the cloud unit, affecting at least 100 employees across sales, operations, and engineering roles.

For Microsoft’s part, its gaming division bore the brunt of its 2024 layoffs, with 1,900 employees affected in January following the Activision Blizzard acquisition. The company continued with cuts throughout the year, including 1,000 positions across Mixed Reality and Azure for Operators in June, and an additional 650 layoffs in the Xbox division by September.

Apple also cut roughly 700 workers in 2024.

Reallocating funds to AI

Meanwhile, NVIDIA has continued to build out its employee roster. The significant job cuts among tech companies in recent years suggests the industry isn’t so much shrinking as reshaping. While it remains to be seen in what ways AI affects the labor market, the 2024 hardware sector shows an unexpected pattern: companies aren’t just losing jobs to AI — they’re cutting jobs to invest in it.