The 5 biggest global business rivalries to watch, and how their outcomes will shape the future

Power is precarious: The more of it you possess, the more competitors you attract, gunning for your customers, star employees, and market share. Fortune magazine drilled down on five of the biggest rivalries in business, across chips, AI, EVs, investing and finance, and energy. And though these incumbents and rising rivals are fierce, never count out the dark horses who are hungry for a spot at the top.

1. AI chips.  Driven by soaring demand for its high-performance chips that power generative AI, Nvidia now is the most valuable company in the world.  It controls over 90% of the market for the specialized chips used to train and run AI systems—cementing its dominance in the hardware race fueling the AI boom. Still, Huang (Nvidia’s CEO) is keeping an eye on the horizon. AMD (run by his cusion Lisa Su) is positioning itself as a viable alternative which is pushing hard to establish itself as a viable second source for AI chips amid surging demand. The company has secured wins from major players like Microsoft and Meta—both eager to diversify their supply chains and reduce dependence on Nvidia’s tightly controlled hardware and software ecosystem.
2. Electric vehicles.  Elon Musk, the man who brought EVs to the masses, has seen Tesla’s fortunes erode as he gets entangled in social media and politics. Tesla’s annual deliveries in 2024 declined for the first time ever, and have continued to decline year over year each quarter since. Musk has bet the future on Tesla’s AI and camera-only self-driving system. Critics argue the company’s self-driving tech is well behind that of competitors like Alphabet’s Waymo and BYD. While Tesla is still the most valuable auto company in the world, it’s not clear it will keep the top spot.  The late Charlie Munger, one of the most successful investors of all time, described Wang Chuanfu, founder and CEO of BYD, as a hardworking “genius.” In 2023, when BYD began dueling with Tesla for the top spot in EV sales, the U.S. auto industry started paying attention. BYD’s affordable models, ultrafast charging technology, and complimentary driver assistance systems have helped the company garner 20% of the global EV market. 
3. Artificial Intelligence.  Altman’s leadership of OpenAI has made him one of Silicon Valley’s most powerful, and polarizing, figures. The AI company is rapidly ascending to tech’s top table, with more than 780 million weekly ChatGPT users, big corporate and government customers, and expansion plans in areas ranging from office productivity software to a new hardware device being built by former Apple designer Jony Ive.  Altman’s meteoric rise has made him plenty of enemies. He fell out with Elon Musk years ago and has clashed recently with Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, who has been poaching OpenAI staff with multimillion-dollar comp packages. Google DeepMind competes with OpenAI to build the most capable AI models, and ChatGPT also poses an existential risk to Google’s dominance of internet search.
4. Finance.  As Jamie Dimon, CEO and Chairman, JPMorgan Chase — U.S., closes in on his 20th anniversary as CEO of the country’s biggest bank, Jamie Dimon is the undisputed dean of Wall Street and is poised to go down in history as one of the greatest bankers of all time. In times of crisis, the markets turn to Dimon as a source of clear and unvarnished authority. His stature grew in 2024 when he led JPMorgan Chase to record profits of $58.5 billion on $278.9 billion in revenue.  Marc Rowan, a onetime corporate lawyer, has emerged in recent years as the dominant figure in the fast-growing world of private equity. In 2021, Rowan became CEO of Apollo, which he cofounded, and carved out a bold strategic shift revolving around private credit, a field that has doubled over the past five years to around $2 trillion. 
5. Energy.  Having missed out on the U.S. shale gas boom, Exxon Mobil was playing catch-up when Darren Woods took over as CEO in 2017. Woods’ focus on capital discipline, shareholder returns, and M&A has helped Exxon back on top of the industry, where it leads shale output in the booming Permian Basin. vMike Wirth took over in 2018—one year after Woods at Exxon Mobil. After serving as the energy darling of investors for a few years, Chevron now faces a revitalized Exxon.