Once again, there seems to be no stopping Nvidia. In anticipation of the tech giants’ quarterly reports, the company’s share price is already taking a hit.
Having your shares shoot to a record price without making an announcement yourself: only Nvidia can do it these days. Shares of the GPU specialist rounded the $138 per share mark last night: a record for the company. This raises Nvidia’s total market value to $3.4 trillion.
The stock market is bracing itself for quarterly reports from Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon, expected this week. However, we can already predict that the companies will announce major investments in AI infrastructure.
‘Disturbed demand’ to Blackwell
And that, of course, is good news for Nvidia: CEO Jensen Huang sees “crazed demand” for the upcoming Blackwell GPUs, despite production problems. Those who did not place a timely order seem to be done for. The chips are reportedly already sold out for the next 12 months.
Ironically, quarterly reports in August still caused a wave of (exaggerated) panic among investors. Stagnating profit margins at Nvidia, despite record sales, and skyrocketing expenses by its customers made the stock market world doubt the profitability of AI. That panic now seems to be behind us: things can move that fast in the stock market.
Hijackers on the coast
Nvidia has long been in a monopoly position with its GPUs, but that could change. AMD, in particular, is pitching itself as Nvidia’ s challenger on the AI stage. Last week in San Francisco, we witnessed the announcement of the new generations of Instinct accelerators, competing directly with Hopper and Blackwell. To a lesser extent, Nvidia must also consider competition from Intel’s Gaudi 3.
read also
AMD aims to knock AI king Nvidia off its throne
In China, competition comes from surprising quarters. Huawei is poised to replace Nvidia there. Nvidia sees itself hampered in China by U.S. trade restrictions that only allow it to ship low-end GPUs. Through an illegal trade, Chinese companies are still trying to get coveted Nvidia GPUs.