Despite rising competition, Nvidia holds 80% of the fast-growing market for artificial intelligence chips as the tech industry’s graphics processing unit, or GPU, of choice for making and deploying generative AI software.
What investors will want to see when Nvidia reports its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday is whether it can continue to grow at a fierce rate, even as the boom in AI enters its third year.
Nvidia is entering “uncharted territory” as it attempts to continue growing on a $3.5 trillion market cap, wrote HSBC analyst Frank Lee in a report this week.
“We have pondered this amazing growth trajectory and not only do we see no signs of a slowdown, we expect further upside in 2026 data center momentum,” Lee said in his note. He has a buy rating on the stock.
Future growth will have to come from Blackwell, its next-generation chip that has just started shipping to end-users such as Microsoft, Google and OpenAI. More important than Nvidia’s third-quarter results will be what the company says about demand for the Blackwell chip.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will likely update investors about how that is shaping up on Wednesday, and he will potentially address reports that some of the systems based on Blackwell chips are experiencing overheating issues.
In August, Nvidia said it expected about “several billion” in Blackwell sales during the January quarter.
“Our base case is for NVDA to ship ~100K Blackwell GPUs in 4Q, which we believe is near the low-end of investor expectations,” Raymond James analyst Srini Pajjuri wrote in a note last week. He has a strong buy rating on the stock.
Since Nvidia’s last earnings report, the stock is up nearly 19%, capping off a stunning run that has seen the share price rise eightfold since ChatGPT was released in late 2022. Alongside the stock’s rise has been a fierce increase in sales and margin, and its forward price to earnings ratio has expanded to just under 50, according to FactSet.
Growth is slowing, but that is partially because Nvidia’s top line is so much larger than before. Nvidia reported 122% growth in sales in the most-recent quarter. That was lower than the 262% year-over-year growth it reported in the April quarter and the 265% growth in the January quarter.
Analysts polled by LSEG are expecting around $33.12 billion in revenue, which would be nearly 83% growth compared to a year ago. The company is also expected to post 75 cents in earnings per share, according to LSEG consensus estimates.
Nvidia’s data center business accounted for nearly 88% of sales in the most-recent quarter, taking the focus off the company’s legacy computer games business.
The company makes the chip for the Nintendo Switch, for example, which the Japanese video game company says is seeing major sales declines as the game console ages. Nvidia’s gaming business is expected to grow about 6% to $3.03 billion, according to a FactSet estimate. Its automotive business, making chips for electric cars, is still small, even though analysts expect it to grow 38% to about $360 million in sales.
But none of that will matter as long as Nvidia’s data center business continues to grow at a rate that is nearly doubling on an annual basis and Huang signals to investors that the party won’t end.
Altimeter Capital CEO Brad Gerstner said Thursday that he’s moving out of the “bomb shelter” with Nvidia and into a position of safety, expecting that the chipmaker is positioned to withstand President Donald Trump’s widespread tariffs.
“The growth and the demand for GPUs is off the charts,” he told CNBC’s “Fast Money Halftime Report,” referring to Nvidia’s graphics processing units that are powering the artificial intelligence boom. He said investors just need to listen to commentary from OpenAI, Google and Elon Musk.
President Trump announced an expansive and aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy in a ceremony at the White House on Wednesday. The plan established a 10% baseline tariff, though many countries like China, Vietnam and Taiwan are subject to steeper rates. The announcement sent stocks tumbling on Thursday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq down more than 5%, headed for its worst day since 2022.
The big reason Nvidia may be better positioned to withstand Trump’s tariff hikes is because semiconductors are on the list of exceptions, which Gerstner called a “wise exception” due to the importance of AI.
Nvidia’s business has exploded since the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in 2022, and annual revenue has more than doubled in each of the past two fiscal years. After a massive rally, Nvidia’s stock price has dropped by more than 20% this year and was down almost 7% on Thursday.
Gerstner is concerned about the potential of a recession due to the tariffs, but is relatively bullish on Nvidia, and said the “negative impact from tariffs will be much less than in other areas.”
He said it’s key for the U.S. to stay competitive in AI. And while the company’s chips are designed domestically, they’re manufactured in Taiwan “because they can’t be fabricated in the U.S.” Higher tariffs would punish companies like Meta and Microsoft, he said.
“We’re in a global race in AI,” Gerstner said. “We can’t hamper our ability to win that race.”
YouTube on Thursday announced new video creation tools for Shorts, its short-form video feed that competes against TikTok.
The features come at a time when TikTok, which is owned by Chinese company ByteDance, is at risk of an effective ban in the U.S. if it’s not sold to an American owner by April 5.
Among the new tools is an updated video editor that allows creators to make precise adjustments and edits, a feature that automatically syncs video cuts to the beat of a song and AI stickers.
The creator tools will become available later this spring, said YouTube, which is owned by Google.
Along with the new features, YouTube last week said it was changing the way view counts are tabulated on Shorts. Under the new guidelines, Shorts views will count the number of times the video is played or replayed with no minimum watch time requirement.
Previously, views were only counted if a video was played for a certain number of seconds. This new tabulation method is similar to how views are counted on TikTok and Meta’s Reels, and will likely inflate view counts.
“We got this feedback from creators that this is what they wanted. It’s a way for them to better understand when their Shorts have been seen,” YouTube Chief Product Officer Johanna Voolich said in a YouTube video. “It’s useful for creators who post across multiple platforms.”
CEO of Meta and Facebook Mark Zuckerberg, Lauren Sanchez, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk attend the inauguration ceremony before Donald Trump is sworn in as the 47th U.S. president in the U.S. Capitol Rotunda in Washington, Jan. 20, 2025.
Saul Loeb | Via Reuters
Technology stocks plummeted Thursday after President Donald Trump’s new tariff policies sparked widespread market panic.
Apple led the declines among the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group, dropping nearly 9%. The iPhone maker makes its devices in China and other Asian countries. The stock is on pace for its steepest drop since 2020.
Other megacaps also felt the pressure. Meta Platforms and Amazon fell more than 7% each, while Nvidia and Tesla slumped more than 5%. Nvidia builds its new chips in Taiwan and relies on Mexico for assembling its artificial intelligence systems. Microsoft and Alphabet both fell about 2%.
The drop in technology stocks came amid a broader market selloff spurred by fears of a global trade war after Trump unveiled a blanket 10% tariff on all imported goods and a range of higher duties targeting specific countries after the bell Wednesday. He said the new tariffs would be a “declaration of economic independence” for the U.S.
Companies and countries worldwide have already begun responding to the wide-sweeping policy, which included a 34% tariff on China stacked on a previous 20% tax, a 46% duty on Vietnam and a 20% levy on imports from the European Union.
China’s Ministry of Commerce urged the U.S. to “immediately cancel” the unilateral tariff measures and said it would take “resolute counter-measures.”
The tariffs come on the heels of a rough quarter for the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the worst period for the index since 2022. Stocks across the board have come under pressure over concerns of a weakening U.S. economy. The Nasdaq Composite dropped nearly 5% on Thursday, bringing its year-to-date loss to 13%.
Trump applauded some megacap technology companies for investing money into the U.S. during his speech, calling attention to Apple’s plan to spend $500 billion over the next four years.