Just a few days ago when it was revealed that Tesla Inc (NASDAQ:TSLA) and computer chip maker Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) were working on self-driving automobile technologies, AMD stock popped at the expense of Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) shares. See, not only are autonomous cars supposed to be Nvidia’s turf, Nvidia and Tesla already had an autonomous-vehicle development partnership in place. The electric car company was (proverbially) switching horses in the middle of a stream.

Fans, followers and, presumably, owners of AMD stock had a field day with the news of course, holding it up as sign that Advanced Micro Devices was poised to dethrone Nvidia as not only the king of autonomous vehicles, but as the current king of artificial intelligence.

While it would be unfair to say what was good news for Advanced Micro Devices was is irrelevant to Nvidia, it would also be inaccurate to suggest the new Tesla partnership unwinds the bulk of the reasons you’d want to own Nvidia shares over AMD stock.

The Consensus Is…

The revelation certainly brought out plenty of strong opinions, not just from the investor community, but the analyst community as well. Interestingly, while most of the pros acknowledged the newly-forged partnership with Tesla was at the very least a much-needed moral victory for AMD, Nvidia was still the ultimate leader in the artificial intelligence race.

Case(s) in point?

At the more extreme end of the spectrum, Global Equities Research’s Trip Chowdhry claims the Tesla/AMD partnership is pointless, explaining:

“Investors optimism is completely misplaced that AMD will become a significant DML (Deep Machine Learning) player. There is only going to be one GPU player NVDA, just like there is only one CPU Player INTC ….rest all the players will be in the others category, which will be about 10% of the market.”

Though it is true Nvidia has a well-deserved lead on the competition when it comes to artificial intelligence, to suggest any race will remain a one horse race (as he sees it) may underestimate the fact that if nothing else, Advanced Micro Devices could become a lower-priced alternative if it learns that its deep-learning capabilities can’t keep up with Nvidia’s.

Still, Chowdhry’s point holds water. Google, for one, tried AMD’s graphics processing units in its GPU training cluster and was anything but impressed; Advanced Micro Devices just doesn’t have any kind of meaningful presence anywhere else on Deep Machine Learning landscape.

Even the more even-keeled and less dramatic views of the Tesla/AMD partnership can’t go as far as to say NVDA shareholders should be worried. B. Riley analyst Craig Ellis opined:

“We believe the development has potential to be a modest fundamental and psychological negative for NVDA in the intermediate-term, though believe the company remains the dominant autopilot solutions provider with a substantial competitive moat and very strong developer momentum.”

RBC Capital analyst Mitch Steves concurs, noting:

“… we view this announcement as similar to dynamics we anticipate to occur in the data center: AMD winning some share while [Nvidia] remains as the de facto standard and market share leader… The key takeaway in our view is that the value of AI chips is continuing to increase, which is causing companies to look in some instances to a dual source. We continue to believe Nvidia will be the market share leader.”

In other words, while the rumors of the deal between Tesla and Advanced Micro Devices certainly made for great headlines, there’s more bark than bite to them.

Bottom Line for AMD Stock

Don’t misread the message. AMD still has plenty going for it. As more than one analyst believed, there is a role for Advanced Micro Devices somewhere in the world of artificial intelligence. It’s also doing well with its GPUs for use as actual graphical processing technologies, and cryptocurrency mining is a market that’s not apt to ever go away even if its growth slows down. In the meantime, its new Threadripper processor is getting rave reviews. CPUs are a market still ultimately controlled by Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) though, and Intel isn’t simply going to roll over, much the same way Nvidia isn’t going to let go of its lead in artificial intelligence.

More than a few owners of AMD stock are about to find out how tough it is to dethrone a market leader, whether that leader deserves all of its market share or not.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities. You can follow him on Twitter.