Chipmakers focused on artificial intelligence are in a race to get their hardware out the door, a theme that's on full display this week at a major industry event in Southern California.

A little-known start-up called Wave Computing shared exhibit floor space with tech giants including Google and Microsoft at the 31st annual Neural Information Processing Systems conference.

Wave is showcasing a motherboard sitting inside a glass case, but one key component is missing: a processor. The chip itself will be ready "very soon," Lee Flanagin, Wave's senior vice president and chief business officer, told CNBC.

Graphcore, a European AI start-up, similarly has space on the floor but doesn't have a chip to show. In fact, the company is even without a board at the conference. Graphcore said in July that its chips would become available to early customers before the end of the year, but the timing has since slipped to "the start of 2018."

A well-funded start-up called Cerebras is among other industry newbies with representatives floating around the sold-out NIPS conference.