Connect with us

Published

on

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presents “Blackwell” at an event ahead of the Computex forum, in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 2, 2024.

Ann Wang | Reuters

Nvidia shares have surged 25% in the last month and are closing in on a record ahead of tech earnings season in the coming weeks, when top customers like Meta, Microsoft and Alphabet will update shareholders on their expected investments in artificial intelligence.

Following a brief but dramatic dip in late August and early September, Nvidia has rebounded sharply. The stock was down slightly on Wednesday at around $132, just shy of its closing high of $135.58 reached in July. Nvidia has surpassed Microsoft as the second-most valuable company, behind only Apple.

Nvidia has been the biggest beneficiary of the AI boom, as companies including Meta, OpenAI, Alphabet, Microsoft and Oracle continue to unveil technologies and products that require hefty investments in its graphics processing units (GPUs).

In August, Nvidia reported second-quarter earnings that showed revenue rose 122% year-over-year while net income more than doubled to $16.6 billion. The company also gave stronger-than-expected guidance for the current quarter and said it expects to ship several billion dollars worth of its new Blackwell AI chip. Demand is so high that Nvidia expects shipments for its current-generation Hopper chip to increase over the next two quarters.

“We see NVDA remaining the leader in the AI training and inference chips for Data Center applications, Mizuho analysts said in a note on Wednesday, estimating that the company has about 95% market share. The analysts have a $140 price target on the stock but noted risks in potentially escalating export restrictions to China, geopolitical tensions regarding Taiwan or a significant pullback in AI server spending.

“Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first,” CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview last week on CNBC’s “Closing Bell Overtime, speaking of the “insane” demand for the Blackwell chip. Production for the GPU, which will cost between $30,000 and 40,000 per unit, is expected to ramp up in the fourth quarter and continue into fiscal 2026.

The stock rallied for other reasons over the last month, too. Nvidia shares jumped 4% on Sept. 23, after a filing showed Huang finished selling the company’s stock.

— CNBC’s Michael Bloom contributed to this report.

WATCH: CNBC’s Full interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang

Watch CNBC's full interview with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Accenture CEO Julie Sweet

Continue Reading

Technology

Fentanyl, ICE and popcorn: Palantir CEO Alex Karp’s earnings call commentary

Published

on

By

Fentanyl, ICE and popcorn: Palantir CEO Alex Karp's earnings call commentary

Alex Karp, Palantir CEO, joins CNBC’s ‘Squawk on the Street’ on June 5, 2025.

CNBC

Palantir CEO Alex Karp took on a familiar target during the company’s earnings call on Monday: His critics.

“Please turn on the conventional television and see how unhappy those that didn’t invest in us are,” Karp said, after the data analytics company reported better-than-expected third-quarter results. “Enjoy, get some popcorn, they’re crying. We are every day making this company better and we’re doing it for this nation, for allied countries.”

Palantir shares are up 25-fold in the past three years, lifting its market cap to over $490 billion and a forward price-to-earnings ratio of almost 280. The stock slipped in extended trading despite the earnings beat and upbeat guidance.

Karp, who co-founded the company in 2003, said Palantir is “going to go very, very deep on our rightness” because it is “exceedingly good for America.”

The eccentric and outspoken CEO has gained a reputation over the years for his colorful — and oftentimes political — commentary in interviews, shareholder letters and on earnings calls. His essay-like quarterly letters have previously quoted famous philosophers, the New Testament and President Richard Nixon.

In Monday’s letter, Karp quoted 20th-century Irish poet William Butler Yeats and argued for a shared “national experience.” He wrote that rejecting a “shared and defined sense of common culture” poses significant drawbacks.

It’s “that pursuit of something greater, and rejection of a vacant and neutered and hollow pluralism, that will help ensure our continued strength and survival,” he wrote.

On the call, Karp pivoted from a discussion of artificial intelligence adoption to fentanyl overdoses in America, a topic he described as “slightly political.”

“I want people to remember if fentanyl was killing 60,000 Yale grads instead of 60,000 working class people, we would be dropping a nuclear bomb on whoever was sending it from South America,” he said.

Karp also commented on the company’s deals with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Israeli military. Earlier this year, Palantir won a $30 million deal to build ImmigrationOS for ICE, providing data on the identification and deportation of immigrants.

In 2023, Karp had a message for people in the tech industry who have misgivings about his company’s dealings with intelligence agencies and the military.

“You may not agree with that and, bless you, don’t work here,” Karp said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Palantir, which gets more than half its U.S. revenue from the government, also provided tools to Israel after the deadly Oct. 7 attack by militant group Hamas. In recent years, both Karp and the company have undertaken a fiercely pro-Israel stance.

Following the Oct. 7 attack, Palantir took out a full-page ad in The New York Times, saying it “stands with Israel” and held its first board meeting in Tel Aviv, Israel, a few months later. Karp has said the company has lost employees due to his staunch Israel stance, and he expects more to leave.

“We’re on the front line of all adversaries, including vis-à-vis China, we’re on ICE and we’ve supported Israel,” he said on the earnings call. “I don’t know why this is all controversial, but many people find that controversial.”

WATCH: Stocks like Palantir and Mag 7 are not ‘unique’ to the market, says Richard Bernstein

Stocks like Palantir and Mag 7 are not 'unique' to the market, says Richard Bernstein

Continue Reading

Technology

CNBC Daily Open: Outside AI, the market isn’t looking that hot

Published

on

By

CNBC Daily Open: Outside AI, the market isn't looking that hot

CFOTO | Future Publishing | Getty Images

The “everything store” might have secured its biggest customer yet.

On Monday, Amazon announced that it had signed a $38 billion deal with OpenAI, offering the ChatGPT maker access to Amazon Web Services’ infrastructure.

On the one hand, the move isn’t too surprising — a continuation of OpenAI’s spending spree as it looks to secure resources to run its power-hungry artificial intelligence models.

On the other, OpenAI’s turn to Amazon shows that the firm is diversifying from its reliance on Microsoft, which had been its exclusive cloud services provider until this year. That could suggest OpenAI is getting ready for an initial public offering as it looks to signal “both independence and operational maturity,” as CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos writes.

Amazon shares surged on the news to close at a record high. Nvidia also had a positive day after Microsoft announced it was granted a license by the U.S. government to export the AI darling’s chips to the United Arab Emirates.

While Big Tech is attracting investor interest, the rest of the market has been rather lackluster.

Even as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose on the back of the tech behemoths, more than 300 stocks in the broad-based index ended the day lower — a warning sign that only a narrow segment of the market is faring well.

What you need to know today

Palantir’s third-quarter results beat estimates. The company foresees revenue of around $1.33 billion for the current quarter, outstripping the $1.19 billion expected by analysts, according to LSEG. Shares, however, fell 4.3% in extended trading on Monday evening stateside.

OpenAI signs a $38 billion deal with Amazon. Under the agreement, OpenAI will immediately begin running artificial intelligence processes on Amazon Web Services, harnessing Nvidia’s AI chips. Amazon shares popped 4% and closed at a record.

Microsoft gets approval to ship Nvidia chips to UAE. The U.S. Commerce Department license, granted in September, allows Microsoft to ship 60,400 additional A100 chips, involving Nvidia’s advanced GB300 graphics processing units. Shares of Nvidia rose 2.2%.

U.S. markets mostly rise. On Monday stateside, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite advanced, boosted by tech shares. The pan-European Stoxx 600 ended flat. Auto stocks including Renault and Volkswagen rose.

[PRO] Growing risks to global equities. European stock markets hit highs last week. But there are several factors that might derail this upward trajectory, analysts say.

And finally…

U.S. President Donald Trump meets with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, on Feb. 13, 2025.

Jim Watson | Afp | Getty Images

Continue Reading

Technology

Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

Published

on

By

Why Jim Cramer wants to load up on more shares of this DuPont spinoff

Continue Reading

Trending