Nvidia Stock Wavers, AMD Gains. What’s Driving the AI Chip Players.

Nvidia chips are the favored hardware for training artificial-intelligence models. (Dreamstime)

Nvidia stock was edging down Wednesday. Its next generation of artificial-intelligence chips could face a delay amid a greater challenge from Advanced Micro Devices , according to one analyst.

Nvidia shares were down 1.3% in afternoon trading, lagging a 0.02% rise for the Nasdaq Composite Index.

One factor affecting the stock could be an analyst’s claim that Nvidia’s next-generation Rubin hardware is being pushed back to better rival AMD.

“We think it is very likely that Rubin will be delayed. The first version of Rubin was already taped out in late June but Nvidia is now redesigning the chip to better match AMD’s upcoming MI450,” wrote Fubon Research analyst Sherman Shang in a research note.

Shang said that while the market is generally expecting mass production of Rubin chips to begin in the third quarter of 2026, supply-chain checks suggest only “limited volume” next year as Nvidia looks to increase the power of the processor, presenting challenges in manufacturing.

After this story was published, an Nvidia spokesperson sent an emailed statement responding to an earlier request for comment: “The report is incorrect. Rubin is on track.”

As Barron’s has previously noted, AMD’s current AI chips have made little impact on the dominance of Nvidia’s Blackwell hardware. However, the MI400 series—which includes the MI450—will be AMD’s first rack-scale, 72-processor AI server offering. That could make it a more serious rival.

Meanwhile, AI cloud company CoreWeave said Tuesday that demand is “insatiable” alongside its earnings report and it expects Nvidia’s latest GB200/GB300 NVL72 AI servers to do well over the next four quarters. CoreWeave rents out servers exclusively using Nvidia hardware, and Nvidia is an investor in the company.

“We have never wavered from our belief that the market is structurally supply-constrained, and that is based on our discussions and relationships with the largest, most important consumers of this infrastructure in the world,” CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator told analysts on an earnings call.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com