Majority of DPU/SmartNIC Shipments Driven by Two Customers, Reports

Crehan Research

Market Posts 30% Increase

SAN FRANCISCO, April 9, 2025 — The DPU/SmartNIC Ethernet market posted

very strong growth in 2024, with annual revenues and shipments increasing by

nearly 30%, according to a recent report from Crehan Research. Cloud service

providers remained the main driver of growth, with just two of these companies,

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure, accounting for most of the

deployments – see accompanying figure. Other cloud providers including Alibaba,

CoreWeave, Google,

IBM,

Oracle and xAI comprised

most

of

the

remaining

shipments.

“DPU/SmartNIC

adoption

has, so far, been mostly within

companies

that rent server

capabilities to customers, and

has not yet

seen broad

penetration

into markets

beyond this," said Seamus Crehan, president of Crehan Research. "However, we are

seeing new innovations, use cases and deployment models such as DPU-enabled

Ethernet switches and CPU replacement, which should expand the customer base."

In correlation with a couple of cloud service providers comprising most of the

market’s shipments, Crehan’s report shows that the majority of the DPU/SmartNIC

volumes are self-built, as opposed to merchant-built. But Crehan said that is

beginning to change. "Self-built DPUs/SmartNICs continue to account for the

majority of market revenues and shipments, but we saw much higher growth from

the merchant-built segment, as adoption of these products broadens beyond the

largest few cloud service providers," he said.

About Crehan Research Inc.

Crehan Research Inc. produces reports with very detailed statistics and information

on the data center switch and server-class adapter & LOM/controller (NIC) markets.

The company’s reports are supported with rich insights and context to deliver

increased value. For more information about Crehan Research Inc. visit

www.CrehanResearch.com.

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