CUDA has a strong grasp on a lot of the scientific market because Nvidia was ahead of the curve with CUDA initially and then has spent tons of money advertising

CUDA has a strong grasp on a lot of the scientific market because Nvidia was ahead of the curve with CUDA initially and then has spent tons of money advertising and selling it to entrench it. To some degree it's a dev's own fault for getting sucked into a proprietary ecosystem, but ultimately "switch your code to something else" is not always a realistic option if you want to keep up with a community where CUDA is popular. CUDA is not as dominant as it was at first now that there are serious alternatives, but Nvidia works hard (both carrot and stick) to keep you locked in. And their hardware and software tools genuinely do have great performance, even if they should be better if Nvidia was a bit less... well evil honestly.