Nvidia Stock Hits Record, Just Misses $5 Trillion as GTC Kicks Into High Gear

Nvidia chips are the favored choice for artificial-intelligence systems. (Courtesy Argonne National Laboratory)

Key Points

• Nvidia stock rose 5% to a record high of $201.03, closing with a market value of $4.9 trillion.
• CEO Jensen Huang announced over $500 billion in cumulative revenue visibility for current and future AI chips through 2026.
• Nvidia unveiled new partnerships and technologies, including a quantum computing interconnect and a 100,000 robo-taxi fleet agreement with Uber.

Nvidia closed at a record high Tuesday as investors tuned into the company’s GTC event.

Nvidia stock rose 5% to $201.03 on Tuesday, a record high. Among other chip makers, Advanced Micro Devices was down 0.6% and Broadcom was up 3.0%. Nvidia closed with a market value of $4.9 trillion, just missing the $205.76 level that would have given it a market cap of $5 trillion.

Nvidia is hosting its GTC event in the nation’s capital from Monday through Wednesday, with CEO Jensen Huang giving his keynote address on Tuesday. In the speech, he announced several new partnerships and technologies—including a new interconnect technology for quantum computing and an agreement with Uber to build a 100,000 robo-taxi fleet.

Huang also said Nvidia now has visibility on more than $500 billion of cumulative revenue for its current Blackwell AI chips and future Rubin chips through 2026.

The address comes as President Donald Trump is visiting Asia and is expected to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping on Thursday. Potential sales of U.S.-made AI chips to China is expected to be on the agenda.

The event puts any concerns investors might have had about Qualcomm’s entry into the AI chip market—if they ever had any—on the back burner. Yes, Qualcomm’s AI200 will start shipping next year followed by the AI250 in 2027, with the first customer being Humain, an AI company established by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

However, it isn’t clear whether Qualcomm’s products are likely to gain traction with the major cloud-computing companies that are fueling business for Nvidia.

“The specifications for Qualcomm’s products seem to be much lower than those of Nvidia and even AMD,” wrote Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes in a research note. “The key for Qualcomm from here is whether any other non-Sovereign customers will be interested, indicating broader adoption.”

Last month, Broadcom said last month it expects clients to make more use of its hardware in the future at the expense of Nvidia’s graphics-processing units, but the competitive pressures haven’t gotten Wall Street to sour on the stock. Analysts are generally backing Nvidia to remain the leader even if it loses some of the roughly 90% market share it owns. Nvidia has a key advantage, which is that developers are familiar with its CUDA software.

If the stock market is telling us anything, it’s that there’s no need to worry about Nvidia’s ability to stay ahead of the pack.

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