Track market-moving stories before they get noisy

Jensen Huang, one of the co-founders of Nvidia (NVDA +1.34%), is no stranger to making bold predictions. One that he has been floating for a few years is that data center capital expenditures will reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion annually by 2030. That's a massive increase from today's levels, and he just commented that he believes that projection is still accurate.

While that projection may sound outlandish, I think there's some truth to it, because Huang is privy to conversations that the regular investor is not.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang. Image source: Nvidia Corporation.

Nvidia is poised to head higher with this guidance While investors should view most CEO comments through a cautionary lens, this is one situation where I think investors should be a bit more trusting. The data center build-out is in full swing, and many companies cannot access enough computing units to meet their needs. This is causing them to plan out their growth over several years. Part of this means sharing their build-out projections with suppliers like Nvidia, which can then tell their suppliers how much capacity to prepare for. This can happen years in advance of when the chips are actually needed, so with the start of 2030 being just over three years away, it's not outlandish to think that there are plans this far out.

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

95/100

Today's Change

(

1.34

%) $

3.09

Current Price

$

233.95

So, I think investors can take most of what Huang says at face value.

And if he ends up being right, there could be monstrous upside.

In 2026, Nvidia expects the big five artificial intelligence (AI) hyperscalers to spend nearly $800 billion on capital expenditures. This year, Wall Street analysts estimate Nvidia's revenue will reach $411 billion. There are other companies spending big on AI outside the big five, so the actual total for this year may reach as high as $1 trillion. That would give Nvidia about a 40% share of all spending.

If it can maintain that share, Nvidia's revenue could top $1 trillion by 2030. That would easily lead to the stock doubling over that time frame, and anytime you can find a stock that has the potential to double in under five years, it's a fantastic investment opportunity.

Nvidia is still one of the top ways to invest in the AI build-out; with Huang reaffirming the strength of the AI arms race, I think it's a great buying signal for investors.

Mar Vista Investment Partners LLC lessened its position in shares of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report) by 2.7% in the second quarter, according to the company in its most recent 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The institutional investor owned 350,322 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock after selling 9,770 shares during the period. NVIDIA comprises 7.0% of Mar Vista Investment Partners LLC’s holdings, making the stock its largest position. Mar Vista Investment Partners LLC’s holdings in NVIDIA were worth $70,096,000 as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Other institutional investors also recently modified their holdings of the company. Bank of America Corp DE lifted its position in shares of NVIDIA by 2.1% in the first quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 191,200,989 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $33,345,453,000 after purchasing an additional 4,019,505 shares in the last quarter. Invesco Ltd. grew its holdings in shares of NVIDIA by 0.3% in the 4th quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 143,239,504 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $26,714,167,000 after acquiring an additional 446,178 shares in the last quarter. Amundi increased its position in shares of NVIDIA by 10.4% in the first quarter. Amundi now owns 133,768,018 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $23,329,141,000 after acquiring an additional 12,575,177 shares during the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP increased its position in shares of NVIDIA by 13,709.1% in the fourth quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP now owns 125,760,307 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $23,454,297,000 after acquiring an additional 124,849,603 shares during the last quarter. Finally, Dimensional Fund Advisors LP raised its holdings in NVIDIA by 0.6% during the first quarter. Dimensional Fund Advisors LP now owns 94,521,253 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $16,479,126,000 after acquiring an additional 555,221 shares in the last quarter. 65.27% of the stock is currently owned by institutional investors.

Key NVIDIA News Here are the key news stories impacting NVIDIA this week:

Positive Sentiment: Morgan Stanley named NVIDIA its top semiconductor pick, maintaining an Overweight rating and setting a $300 price target. The firm believes NVIDIA’s software ecosystem, scale and positioning across AI infrastructure trends give it a durable competitive moat. Morgan Stanley names NVIDIA a top pick Positive Sentiment: NVIDIA’s recently announced $150 billion buyback authorization lifts total remaining repurchase capacity to approximately $235 billion. Investors view the plan as a sign of management confidence and a potential source of per-share earnings support. NVIDIA buyback analysis Positive Sentiment: Analysts continue to raise expectations for hyperscaler spending, with Barclays estimating NVIDIA could generate $401 billion in hyperscaler revenue in 2027. CoreWeave’s launch of the Vera Rubin platform and additional enterprise customers also supports demand for NVIDIA’s next-generation systems. Barclays hyperscaler revenue estimate Neutral Sentiment: The broader semiconductor and technology complex is attracting buying interest as AI investment remains a major market leadership theme. However, NVIDIA’s valuation and substantial market concentration leave the stock sensitive to interest rates, economic data and shifts in institutional positioning. Negative Sentiment: Investors are monitoring reports that Amazon may move roughly $8 billion of NVIDIA chips off its balance sheet through leasing or financing structures. While this could improve customer flexibility, it adds scrutiny around AI infrastructure financing and so-called circular transactions. Amazon NVIDIA chip balance-sheet report Negative Sentiment: Export-control concerns remain a headline risk after prosecutors alleged a California man helped smuggle approximately $300 million of NVIDIA chips to China. Separately, Michael Burry warned that GPU depreciation could undermine the economics of the AI infrastructure boom, while Alphabet’s growing use of internally designed chips represents a longer-term competitive threat. NVIDIA chip smuggling prosecution Analysts Set New Price Targets NVDA has been the subject of a number of analyst reports. Deutsche Bank Aktiengesellschaft restated a “buy” rating on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Monday, August 31st. TD Cowen reissued a “buy” rating on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Tuesday, August 18th. Cantor Fitzgerald restated an “overweight” rating and set a $350.00 target price on shares of NVIDIA in a report on Thursday. DA Davidson reaffirmed a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 price target on shares of NVIDIA in a research report on Thursday, August 27th. Finally, BMO Capital Markets set a $340.00 price target on shares of NVIDIA and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research note on Thursday, August 20th. Four research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fifty have issued a Buy rating and one has assigned a Hold rating to the stock. According to data from MarketBeat.com, the company currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and an average price target of $320.71. Get Our Latest Stock Report on NVIDIA

Insider Activity In other NVIDIA news, CFO Colette Kress sold 34,918 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Thursday, September 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $219.05, for a total value of $7,648,787.90. Following the completion of the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 765,103 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $167,595,812.15. This represents a 4.36% decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, Director Mark A. Stevens sold 622,239 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $231.62, for a total value of $144,122,997.18. Following the completion of the transaction, the director owned 2,336,531 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $541,187,310.22. This represents a 21.03% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. In the last ninety days, insiders sold 1,766,118 shares of company stock worth $399,450,353. Insiders own 3.94% of the company’s stock.

NVIDIA Stock Up 1.3% Shares of NASDAQ NVDA opened at $233.95 on Friday. The company has a market cap of $5.64 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.58, a PEG ratio of 1.78 and a beta of 2.22. The company has a current ratio of 4.59, a quick ratio of 3.85 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14. NVIDIA Corporation has a 12 month low of $164.27 and a 12 month high of $237.88. The stock has a 50-day moving average price of $218.74 and a two-hundred day moving average price of $207.48.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA – Get Free Report) last issued its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 26th. The computer hardware maker reported $2.22 EPS for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.09 by $0.13. NVIDIA had a net margin of 63.66% and a return on equity of 96.04%. The business had revenue of $96.22 billion during the quarter, compared to the consensus estimate of $92.27 billion. During the same quarter in the prior year, the firm earned $1.05 EPS. The firm’s revenue was up 105.9% compared to the same quarter last year. As a group, analysts forecast that NVIDIA Corporation will post 9.25 earnings per share for the current fiscal year.

NVIDIA Dividend Announcement The business also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, October 1st. Stockholders of record on Thursday, September 10th were issued a dividend of $0.25 per share. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, September 10th. This represents a $1.00 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 0.4%. NVIDIA’s dividend payout ratio is 12.64%.

NVIDIA declared that its board has initiated a stock buyback plan on Monday, September 28th that permits the company to repurchase $150.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization permits the computer hardware maker to buy up to 2.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares repurchase plans are typically a sign that the company’s board of directors believes its stock is undervalued.

NVIDIA Profile (Free Report)

NVIDIA Corporation is a technology company that designs accelerated computing platforms, graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs), networking products and related software. Its technologies are used in artificial intelligence, data centers, scientific and technical computing, gaming, professional visualization, automotive systems and robotics.

The company’s products include GeForce GPUs and gaming software, data center computing platforms, networking solutions, and enterprise software for AI development and deployment.

Read More Five stocks we like better than NVIDIA AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird Progress Comes With Several Risks Still Unresolved Time to Nibble on MCD Stock After it Enters Oversold Territory? McCormick Stock Trades Cheap, Offers Dividend Growth and Unilever Deal Upside Corning and AT&T’s $3 Billion Fiber Deal Reveals Where AI Spending Goes Next

Receive News & Ratings for NVIDIA Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for NVIDIA and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Mmbg Investment Advisors CO. lifted its holdings in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report) by 3.0% during the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent disclosure with the SEC. The institutional investor owned 272,239 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock after acquiring an additional 7,929 shares during the period. NVIDIA makes up approximately 4.3% of Mmbg Investment Advisors CO.’s investment portfolio, making the stock its 7th largest position. Mmbg Investment Advisors CO.’s holdings in NVIDIA were worth $54,472,000 at the end of the most recent quarter.

Other hedge funds have also bought and sold shares of the company. Bank of America Corp DE grew its position in shares of NVIDIA by 2.1% during the 1st quarter. Bank of America Corp DE now owns 191,200,989 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $33,345,453,000 after purchasing an additional 4,019,505 shares in the last quarter. Invesco Ltd. raised its position in shares of NVIDIA by 0.3% in the fourth quarter. Invesco Ltd. now owns 143,239,504 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $26,714,167,000 after buying an additional 446,178 shares in the last quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP boosted its stake in shares of NVIDIA by 13,709.1% in the fourth quarter. J. Stern & Co. LLP now owns 125,760,307 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $23,454,297,000 after buying an additional 124,849,603 shares during the period. Amundi boosted its stake in shares of NVIDIA by 10.4% in the first quarter. Amundi now owns 133,768,018 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $23,329,141,000 after buying an additional 12,575,177 shares during the period. Finally, Deutsche Bank AG grew its position in NVIDIA by 2.3% during the second quarter. Deutsche Bank AG now owns 91,954,159 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $18,399,108,000 after buying an additional 2,045,101 shares in the last quarter. 65.27% of the stock is owned by institutional investors.

Insider Activity at NVIDIA In other NVIDIA news, CFO Colette Kress sold 34,918 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, September 17th. The stock was sold at an average price of $219.05, for a total value of $7,648,787.90. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer directly owned 765,103 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $167,595,812.15. The trade was a 4.36% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which can be accessed through this hyperlink. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Also, EVP Timothy S. Teter sold 30,460 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Monday, September 21st. The stock was sold at an average price of $222.80, for a total value of $6,786,488.00. Following the transaction, the executive vice president owned 2,687,660 shares in the company, valued at $598,810,648. The trade was a 1.12% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The disclosure for this sale is available in the SEC filing. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold a total of 1,766,118 shares of company stock worth $399,450,353 in the last 90 days. Corporate insiders own 3.94% of the company’s stock.

NVIDIA Trading Up 1.3% NASDAQ:NVDA opened at $233.95 on Friday. The firm’s fifty day moving average is $218.74 and its 200-day moving average is $207.48. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14, a quick ratio of 3.85 and a current ratio of 4.59. NVIDIA Corporation has a 52 week low of $164.27 and a 52 week high of $237.88. The firm has a market cap of $5.64 trillion, a P/E ratio of 29.58, a P/E/G ratio of 1.78 and a beta of 2.22. NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA – Get Free Report) last released its earnings results on Wednesday, August 26th. The computer hardware maker reported $2.22 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, beating the consensus estimate of $2.09 by $0.13. The business had revenue of $96.22 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $92.27 billion. NVIDIA had a net margin of 63.66% and a return on equity of 96.04%. NVIDIA’s revenue for the quarter was up 105.9% on a year-over-year basis. During the same quarter in the previous year, the business earned $1.05 earnings per share. Equities analysts expect that NVIDIA Corporation will post 9.25 earnings per share for the current year.

NVIDIA declared that its Board of Directors has initiated a stock buyback program on Monday, September 28th that authorizes the company to buyback $150.00 billion in outstanding shares. This buyback authorization authorizes the computer hardware maker to purchase up to 2.8% of its shares through open market purchases. Shares buyback programs are typically an indication that the company’s leadership believes its shares are undervalued.

NVIDIA Announces Dividend The firm also recently disclosed a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, October 1st. Stockholders of record on Thursday, September 10th were paid a $0.25 dividend. This represents a $1.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend was Thursday, September 10th. NVIDIA’s payout ratio is currently 12.64%.

Analyst Ratings Changes A number of research firms have commented on NVDA. Rothschild & Co Redburn raised their price objective on NVIDIA from $300.00 to $325.00 in a research note on Thursday, August 27th. Piper Sandler assumed coverage on NVIDIA in a report on Wednesday, September 9th. They set an “overweight” rating and a $300.00 target price on the stock. Itau BBA Securities dropped their price target on NVIDIA from $256.00 to $218.00 in a research note on Wednesday, June 24th. HSBC increased their price objective on shares of NVIDIA from $360.00 to $365.00 in a research note on Thursday, August 27th. Finally, Benchmark reissued a “buy” rating and issued a $335.00 target price on shares of NVIDIA in a report on Thursday, August 27th. Four equities research analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fifty have assigned a Buy rating and one has issued a Hold rating to the company. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, NVIDIA presently has an average rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $320.71.

View Our Latest Stock Report on NVDA

More NVIDIA News Here are the key news stories impacting NVIDIA this week:

Positive Sentiment: Morgan Stanley named NVIDIA its top semiconductor pick, maintaining an Overweight rating and setting a $300 price target. The firm believes NVIDIA’s software ecosystem, scale and positioning across AI infrastructure trends give it a durable competitive moat. Morgan Stanley names NVIDIA a top pick Positive Sentiment: NVIDIA’s recently announced $150 billion buyback authorization lifts total remaining repurchase capacity to approximately $235 billion. Investors view the plan as a sign of management confidence and a potential source of per-share earnings support. NVIDIA buyback analysis Positive Sentiment: Analysts continue to raise expectations for hyperscaler spending, with Barclays estimating NVIDIA could generate $401 billion in hyperscaler revenue in 2027. CoreWeave’s launch of the Vera Rubin platform and additional enterprise customers also supports demand for NVIDIA’s next-generation systems. Barclays hyperscaler revenue estimate Neutral Sentiment: The broader semiconductor and technology complex is attracting buying interest as AI investment remains a major market leadership theme. However, NVIDIA’s valuation and substantial market concentration leave the stock sensitive to interest rates, economic data and shifts in institutional positioning. Negative Sentiment: Investors are monitoring reports that Amazon may move roughly $8 billion of NVIDIA chips off its balance sheet through leasing or financing structures. While this could improve customer flexibility, it adds scrutiny around AI infrastructure financing and so-called circular transactions. Amazon NVIDIA chip balance-sheet report Negative Sentiment: Export-control concerns remain a headline risk after prosecutors alleged a California man helped smuggle approximately $300 million of NVIDIA chips to China. Separately, Michael Burry warned that GPU depreciation could undermine the economics of the AI infrastructure boom, while Alphabet’s growing use of internally designed chips represents a longer-term competitive threat. NVIDIA chip smuggling prosecution NVIDIA Profile (Free Report)

NVIDIA Corporation is a technology company that designs accelerated computing platforms, graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs), networking products and related software. Its technologies are used in artificial intelligence, data centers, scientific and technical computing, gaming, professional visualization, automotive systems and robotics.

The company’s products include GeForce GPUs and gaming software, data center computing platforms, networking solutions, and enterprise software for AI development and deployment.

Further Reading Five stocks we like better than NVIDIA AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird Progress Comes With Several Risks Still Unresolved Time to Nibble on MCD Stock After it Enters Oversold Territory? McCormick Stock Trades Cheap, Offers Dividend Growth and Unilever Deal Upside Corning and AT&T’s $3 Billion Fiber Deal Reveals Where AI Spending Goes Next Want to see what other hedge funds are holding NVDA? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report).

Receive News & Ratings for NVIDIA Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for NVIDIA and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

Stevens Capital Partners raised its stake in NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report) by 67.5% in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The institutional investor owned 22,339 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock after acquiring an additional 9,000 shares during the period. NVIDIA accounts for approximately 0.9% of Stevens Capital Partners’ portfolio, making the stock its 15th largest position. Stevens Capital Partners’ holdings in NVIDIA were worth $4,470,000 at the end of the most recent reporting period.

Other hedge funds have also recently added to or reduced their stakes in the company. Boyd Wealth Management LLC increased its stake in NVIDIA by 273.4% in the 2nd quarter. Boyd Wealth Management LLC now owns 9,145 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $1,830,000 after buying an additional 6,696 shares during the period. Altshuler Shaham Ltd lifted its stake in shares of NVIDIA by 6,451.9% in the 1st quarter. Altshuler Shaham Ltd now owns 637,236 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $111,134,000 after acquiring an additional 627,510 shares during the period. Storen Legacy Partners LLC purchased a new stake in shares of NVIDIA in the fourth quarter valued at about $1,350,000. Baker Tilly Wealth Management LLC boosted its holdings in shares of NVIDIA by 7.4% in the second quarter. Baker Tilly Wealth Management LLC now owns 71,898 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock valued at $14,386,000 after acquiring an additional 4,958 shares in the last quarter. Finally, Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership increased its stake in shares of NVIDIA by 3.6% during the fourth quarter. Arrowstreet Capital Limited Partnership now owns 26,652,420 shares of the computer hardware maker’s stock worth $4,970,704,000 after acquiring an additional 936,506 shares during the period. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 65.27% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analyst Weigh In NVDA has been the subject of a number of recent analyst reports. DZ Bank restated a “buy” rating on shares of NVIDIA in a research report on Wednesday, August 26th. Weiss Ratings reiterated a “buy (b)” rating on shares of NVIDIA in a research report on Wednesday, July 8th. DA Davidson reissued a “buy” rating and set a $300.00 target price on shares of NVIDIA in a research note on Thursday, August 27th. Rothschild & Co Redburn raised their price target on NVIDIA from $300.00 to $325.00 in a report on Thursday, August 27th. Finally, Piper Sandler began coverage on NVIDIA in a research note on Wednesday, September 9th. They issued an “overweight” rating and a $300.00 price target on the stock. Four analysts have rated the stock with a Strong Buy rating, fifty have given a Buy rating and one has given a Hold rating to the company’s stock. Based on data from MarketBeat.com, NVIDIA currently has a consensus rating of “Buy” and a consensus price target of $320.71.

Read Our Latest Stock Analysis on NVIDIA NVIDIA News Summary Here are the key news stories impacting NVIDIA this week:

Positive Sentiment: Morgan Stanley named NVIDIA its top semiconductor pick, maintaining an Overweight rating and setting a $300 price target. The firm believes NVIDIA’s software ecosystem, scale and positioning across AI infrastructure trends give it a durable competitive moat. Morgan Stanley names NVIDIA a top pick Positive Sentiment: NVIDIA’s recently announced $150 billion buyback authorization lifts total remaining repurchase capacity to approximately $235 billion. Investors view the plan as a sign of management confidence and a potential source of per-share earnings support. NVIDIA buyback analysis Positive Sentiment: Analysts continue to raise expectations for hyperscaler spending, with Barclays estimating NVIDIA could generate $401 billion in hyperscaler revenue in 2027. CoreWeave’s launch of the Vera Rubin platform and additional enterprise customers also supports demand for NVIDIA’s next-generation systems. Barclays hyperscaler revenue estimate Neutral Sentiment: The broader semiconductor and technology complex is attracting buying interest as AI investment remains a major market leadership theme. However, NVIDIA’s valuation and substantial market concentration leave the stock sensitive to interest rates, economic data and shifts in institutional positioning. Negative Sentiment: Investors are monitoring reports that Amazon may move roughly $8 billion of NVIDIA chips off its balance sheet through leasing or financing structures. While this could improve customer flexibility, it adds scrutiny around AI infrastructure financing and so-called circular transactions. Amazon NVIDIA chip balance-sheet report Negative Sentiment: Export-control concerns remain a headline risk after prosecutors alleged a California man helped smuggle approximately $300 million of NVIDIA chips to China. Separately, Michael Burry warned that GPU depreciation could undermine the economics of the AI infrastructure boom, while Alphabet’s growing use of internally designed chips represents a longer-term competitive threat. NVIDIA chip smuggling prosecution Insiders Place Their Bets In other NVIDIA news, Director Mark Stevens sold 622,239 shares of the company’s stock in a transaction dated Friday, September 4th. The shares were sold at an average price of $231.62, for a total value of $144,122,997.18. Following the completion of the transaction, the director directly owned 2,336,531 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $541,187,310.22. This represents a 21.03% decrease in their position. The transaction was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Also, CFO Colette Kress sold 34,918 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Thursday, September 17th. The shares were sold at an average price of $219.05, for a total value of $7,648,787.90. Following the transaction, the chief financial officer owned 765,103 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $167,595,812.15. This trade represents a 4.36% decrease in their ownership of the stock. The SEC filing for this sale provides additional information. The transaction was executed under a pre-arranged Rule 10b5-1 trading plan. Insiders have sold 1,766,118 shares of company stock worth $399,450,353 in the last quarter. 3.94% of the stock is owned by corporate insiders.

NVIDIA Stock Up 1.3% Shares of NASDAQ:NVDA opened at $233.95 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 4.59, a quick ratio of 3.85 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.14. The firm has a market cap of $5.64 trillion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 29.58, a PEG ratio of 1.78 and a beta of 2.22. The stock’s 50-day moving average price is $218.74 and its two-hundred day moving average price is $207.48. NVIDIA Corporation has a 12-month low of $164.27 and a 12-month high of $237.88.

NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA – Get Free Report) last announced its quarterly earnings data on Wednesday, August 26th. The computer hardware maker reported $2.22 earnings per share for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $2.09 by $0.13. NVIDIA had a net margin of 63.66% and a return on equity of 96.04%. The business had revenue of $96.22 billion for the quarter, compared to analyst estimates of $92.27 billion. During the same period in the prior year, the firm posted $1.05 EPS. The company’s revenue was up 105.9% on a year-over-year basis. On average, research analysts forecast that NVIDIA Corporation will post 9.25 EPS for the current year.

NVIDIA Announces Dividend The business also recently announced a quarterly dividend, which was paid on Thursday, October 1st. Stockholders of record on Thursday, September 10th were paid a $0.25 dividend. The ex-dividend date was Thursday, September 10th. This represents a $1.00 dividend on an annualized basis and a dividend yield of 0.4%. NVIDIA’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is 12.64%.

NVIDIA declared that its Board of Directors has approved a share buyback plan on Monday, September 28th that authorizes the company to repurchase $150.00 billion in shares. This repurchase authorization authorizes the computer hardware maker to purchase up to 2.8% of its stock through open market purchases. Stock repurchase plans are typically an indication that the company’s leadership believes its stock is undervalued.

NVIDIA Company Profile (Free Report)

NVIDIA Corporation is a technology company that designs accelerated computing platforms, graphics processing units (GPUs), central processing units (CPUs), networking products and related software. Its technologies are used in artificial intelligence, data centers, scientific and technical computing, gaming, professional visualization, automotive systems and robotics.

The company’s products include GeForce GPUs and gaming software, data center computing platforms, networking solutions, and enterprise software for AI development and deployment.

Featured Stories Five stocks we like better than NVIDIA AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird Progress Comes With Several Risks Still Unresolved Time to Nibble on MCD Stock After it Enters Oversold Territory? McCormick Stock Trades Cheap, Offers Dividend Growth and Unilever Deal Upside Corning and AT&T’s $3 Billion Fiber Deal Reveals Where AI Spending Goes Next Want to see what other hedge funds are holding NVDA? Visit HoldingsChannel.com to get the latest 13F filings and insider trades for NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA – Free Report).

Receive News & Ratings for NVIDIA Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for NVIDIA and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter.

US President Donald Trump spent Tuesday showcasing his administration’s approach to AI — touting the US government’s new AI chatbot, dining with tech titans at the White House, and announcing a voluntary agreement with those ​executives that he said would address growing fears about the technology's safety.

The display signaled that Trump is eager to show he is addressing growing voter concerns about AI's ‌dangers without imposing restrictions that could hamper the technology's development, AI safety advocates said. The safety agreement with six companies — Nvidia, SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta and Alphabet’s Google — includes no stated consequences if a company chooses not to comply. Trump described it as “morally binding.”

“This was an attempt to give the impression that the government is listening to these concerns without undercutting what has been a very clear and consistent line from this administration: that regulation and governance inherently ​impede innovation,” said Kat Duffy, who runs an AI team at the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations.

Whether voters buy Trump's effort in the run-up to US midterm elections on November ​3 remains to be seen. Public uneasiness with AI, and the small group of people who seemingly hold sway over it, has risen in recent ⁠months. Three-quarters of Americans worry that AI companies have not gone far enough to prevent AI from causing serious harm to society, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll published September 22. A series of security ​events has also underscored how advanced AI can act unpredictably.

Hundreds of OpenAI AI agents broke out of their testing environment in July and attacked the infrastructure of AI platform Hugging Face. In early September, Anthropic ​researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, saying that the people building AI believe it "could kill us all by the end of the decade." His words, and others, sparked a flurry of calls from US lawmakers for AI regulation.

Through it all, Trump has largely dismissed those concerns, saying that government restrictions would make it harder for American companies to compete against their Chinese counterparts. He has repeatedly said that US law enforcement agencies such as the Justice Department serve as sufficient guardrails, ​and that no new rules are needed. He also directed his administration to call AI "super intelligence," part of an effort to improve the reputation of an unpopular technology.

The concerns have become prominent enough ​to make their way into late-night comedy. In late September, "Saturday Night Live" satirized Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the industry's most outspoken voices on AI risks — even as his company readies a public stock sale that could ‌value it ⁠at $2 trillion — with cast member Jane Wickline portraying the executive.

"AI is not a weapon, it’s a tool: A tool for building weapons. And I urge you to urge me to stop," Wickline said as Amodei.

CONCERNS ABOUT ENFORCEMENT
The accord, inked Tuesday, does include measures that AI safety advocates have sought, including calling for “robust internal controls” to prevent unauthorized hacks as well as partnering with “independent external auditors.” Those concepts have been included in draft state and federal legislation, and California in September enacted the first state law setting rules for how independent auditors evaluate AI products.

But the one-page White House document did not address details or ​enforcement mechanisms.

A White House official said in a ​statement that the agreement will "advance American innovation ⁠and strengthen responsible development" of AI models. Trump is expected to name his Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton as his top AI adviser, Reuters previously reported, a position he has dubbed "AI czar," even as Clayton stays in his role leading the nation's intelligence agencies.

Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat representing Silicon Valley, ​welcomed the idea of "independent auditors" but said that they should report to an independent federal agency.

"They can’t just be auditors that report to (OpenAI ​CEO) Sam Altman or Dario ⁠Amodei," he said. "My concern is the president basically trusting these guys who have a huge profit motive and won’t have the judgment to keep us safe."

Venture capitalist David Sacks, who advises Trump on AI and has been an advocate for unrestricted AI development, said on the social media platform X that securities law and other legal authorities would penalize companies that fail to address problems uncovered by internal controls or auditors.

But AI ⁠safety advocates told ​Reuters those authorities can only address harms after they occur, saying the threats require safeguards designed to prevent large-scale ​harm before it happens.

Nevertheless, some AI observers saw the simple fact of hosting the event as an indication that Trump is absorbing the worries.

Trump’s agreement with the tech executives is “a shift toward acknowledging that there are serious safety and security concerns that ​merit closer coordination between the companies,” said Samuel Hammond, AI policy director at the conservative Foundation for American Innovation.

Gifting appreciated stock to a dying parent can legally erase a six-figure capital gains bill, but a single IRS code section turns the whole plan against you if the timing is off by even one day.

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Some families use a “boomerang” gift strategy: give low-basis stock to a parent in failing health, then inherit it back with a step-up in basis equal to the shares’ value at death. This wipes out the gain on paper. The plan only works if your parent lives more than one year after the gift. If he dies sooner and the shares pass back to you or your spouse, Internal Revenue Code §1014(e) restores your original cost basis, along with the capital gains bill you wanted to avoid. One exception keeps the strategy viable.

Sponsored

Section 1014(e): A One-Year Rule on the Books Since 1981
Under §1014, inherited property normally uses the deceased person’s fair market value at death as its basis. Section 1014(e) covers deaths after December 31, 1981 and applies when appreciated property was given to the decedent during the 1-year period ending on the date of the decedent’s death and then passes back to the donor or the donor’s spouse. In that case, the donor’s basis is the decedent’s adjusted basis immediately before death. Under §1015, a gift recipient takes the giver’s basis, so that number is the price you originally paid.

The test is a strict 12-month count, applied regardless of intent, according to Greenleaf Trust. The headline’s claim that the IRS “pretends the gift never happened” is true for basis only. For gift tax and reporting purposes, the gift still happened. The shares legally belonged to your father, and they count in his estate.

$500,000 of NVIDIA Bought in 2016: $0 or $93,315 in Federal Tax
Say you bought NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction) in September 2016 at a split-adjusted $1.68 a share. With the stock at $230.65 on October 1, 2026, a $500,000 position has a cost basis of about $3,642 and a built-in gain of $496,358. The table assumes sale for $500,000 soon after death, applying either the 15% long-term rate or the top 20% rate, plus the 3.8% net investment income tax.

Scenario
Heir’s Basis
Federal Tax on Sale

Father dies 13 months after the gift, leaves shares to you
$500,000
$0

Father dies 8 months after the gift, leaves shares to you
$3,642
$93,315 (15% rate) or $118,133 (20% rate)

Father dies 8 months after the gift, leaves shares to your children
$500,000
$0

Grandchildren Fall Outside §1014(e), and That Keeps the Strategy Alive
The denial applies only when the property goes back to the donor or the donor’s spouse. Suppose your father’s will or transfer-on-death registration leaves the NVIDIA shares to your children. The statute’s text doesn’t reach them, so their basis is the value on the day he died. Greenleaf Trust’s legal advisor reaches the same reading: a gift to the donor’s child escapes the rule.

The edges are less clear. According to Greenleaf, the IRS has addressed what “passes back” means in only a few of private letter rulings. A trust that pays you, or a gift you can redirect to yourself, calls for a challenge. Your father also decides where the shares go, because they are his.

Section 1014(e) is one of those quiet IRS rules that can cost a family six figures if nobody reads it before the gift moves. We mapped it alongside eight others retired people often trip over, available at no cost: The Retiree’s Tax Trap Map.

Form 709, Pennsylvania and 2 More Traps

For gift tax filing: A $500,000 gift exceeds the $19,000 annual exclusion, so you file Form 709. No tax is due, but the gift uses $481,000 of your $15,000,000 lifetime exemption.
Basis proof: Keep purchase receipts and the transfer statement.
State death taxes: Pennsylvania taxes transfers to lineal heirs at 4.5%. On $500,000 coming back to you, that is $22,500.
Control: Your father can sell the shares, spend them on care, or change his will. His creditors can reach them.

4 Questions to Settle Before Moving Shares in 2026

Check how your custodian will carry your original basis over to your father’s account.
Ask whether his will or beneficiary designation names your children instead of you.
Check if his state charges an inheritance or estate tax.
Consult an estate attorney or CPA about trust phrasing and Form 709 reporting.

Who This Works for in 2026 and Who Should Skip It
The strategy fits a family whose parent’s estate sits below the $15,000,000 exemption, who is comfortable leaving shares to grandchildren, and who can live with the money being spent on his care. Skip it if the plan only works when shares return to you, or if you would struggle should your father need the money. Inside 12 months, a round trip back to you leaves a bill of $93,315 unchanged. Naming grandchildren is the one move that keeps the step-up.

Switching Takes Five Minutes and Three ThingsOpening a high-yield savings account requires about five minutes, your Social Security number, a driver’s license, and the account number you’re funding from — that’s the whole job. The only real decision is which bank, and FinanceBuzz’s comparison of today’s top-rated accounts makes that part quick: current APYs, minimums, and any cash bonuses for new deposits, all FDIC-insured, all on one page. Keep in mind these rates are variable — they follow the market, and today’s are well above the national average. Your money starts earning the higher rate the day it arrives, not the day you get around to it. Compare the current top accounts here.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

A Reddit investor walked away from three of the biggest AI trade names in the market, armed with math showing the economics simply do not add up. Whether his timing was brilliant or costly depends on a gap that Bain…

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Stock traders and investors everywhere: here’s some food for thought. A poster called “u/soukstah” in the r/stocks community on Reddit argued that consumer and enterprise artificial intelligence (AI) spending needs to reach nearly $2 trillion, according to r/stocks community, Reddit. He sold his last shares of NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction), Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOGL) and Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) over that number. The poster credited the Financial Times for the underlying figures.

His own summary captured the mood. “I mean the economics never made sense at these GPU prices, but it’s just getting so ridiculous that even riding the last hours of the party feels wrong.” For anyone who owns NVIDIA, Alphabet or Microsoft shares, the open question is whether being right about that arithmetic says anything about when to sell.

What a $2 Trillion Gap Could Mean The poster’s math starts with return on invested capital (ROIC). If hyperscalers like Alphabet and Microsoft want their historical 30% ROIC, they need $636 billion annually, according to r/stocks community, Reddit. On Reddit, the r/stocks poster called that ten times the current run rate of roughly $70 billion in AI cloud revenues, according to r/stocks community, Reddit.

Model research labs want to earn money too, he added, and that pushed his spending estimate into the trillions. He concluded that software sales of that size aren’t coming anytime soon because consumers are used to free digital products. That logic took him out of NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft.

Sustaining the AI buildout would require an AI market approaching $6 trillion annually by 2031, according to Bain & Company’s latest technology report released at the end of September. By Bain & Company’s math, consumer and enterprise AI together leave about $4.2 trillion of new revenue still to be found, according to Bain & Company. That puts the Reddit poster at the conservative end of the case against NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft.

Market Reaction Split Into Two Stories NVIDIA stock was up 25% year to date as of October 1, 2026, at $231.82, carrying nearly all of the gains among the three names the poster sold. Meanwhile, Alphabet stock was up 8% year to date, far behind NVIDIA.

Microsoft stock was up 7% year to date, the worst showing of the three, while the Invesco QQQ Trust (NASDAQ:QQQ) was up 21%, ahead of both Alphabet and Microsoft. In other words, the index the poster could have held instead outperformed two of the three stocks he sold. For broader-market context, the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (NYSEARCA:SPY) was up 12% year to date as of October 1.

Over a one-year window, Alphabet stock was up 40%, while Microsoft stock was up just 0.4%. Those figures show the party was never general, and part of the exit meant leaving Alphabet and Microsoft, two stocks that fell behind this year while NVIDIA stock compounded.

Bear Case: Right Math, Open Timing On paper, the argument for betting against NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft holds together, since Bain & Company’s version of the shortfall is larger than the poster’s. A revenue gap that wide is a real risk if AI spending is what lifts NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft shares.

Timing is where that case thins out, because Bain & Company’s figures describe a shortfall stretching to 2031, and he sold NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft all at once, as Bain & Company concludes that new categories of AI applications have to arrive to pay for the expansion, a statement about what hasn’t happened yet.

Bottom Line: What Would Settle It The evidence that could settle this argument is whether new AI applications start producing the consumer and enterprise revenue Bain & Company says is still missing. Shareholders could look for signs that customers of NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft are paying for AI products at a scale that begins closing the gap.

Until that evidence arrives, NVIDIA, Alphabet and Microsoft remain two different stories inside one argument. Investors weighing their exposure should adjust their holdings carefully given that the arithmetic runs to the end of the decade while the returns on these three stocks have already split.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

Cerebras stock plummeted nearly 20% this week to its lowest price since the company's monster IPO in May, after a report that chip giant Nvidia will power a crucial piece of OpenAI's latest model.

Research firm SemiAnalysis posted on X on Wednesday that OpenAI will power its "Ultrafast" mode for GPT-6.1 Sol with Nvidia graphics processing units instead of Cerebras hardware. Cerebras shares are now down by more than half since their initial pop that followed the company's debut on the Nasdaq.

The stock, which closed on Friday at $166.43, was also under pressure this week due to the expiration of post-IPO restrictions on some insider shares.

However, it rose almost 3% in extended trading on Friday after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responded to the "speculation about our partnership with Cerebras."

"Cerebras is a close partner, and we have a deep engagement pushing on the frontiers of speed," Altman wrote in a post on X.

Cerebras' stock price

Still, it's been a brutal stretch for Cerebras, which closed at a $95 billion market cap on the first day of trading, just shy of joining the ranks of Meta, Alibaba and now SpaceX, which closed their initial day with valuations over $100 billion.

Cerebras' market cap now sits at just over $39 billion.

Investors were excited by the prospect of an alternative to Nvidia to power AI. Cerebras makes dinner plate-sized ASICs, or a custom microchip built for inference workloads, and leases them from inside its own data centers as a cloud service. In January, Cerebras struck a deal worth over $10 billion with OpenAI to supply it with 750 megawatts of computing power through 2028.

Losing OpenAI inference to Nvidia has put a damper on that exuberance. According to McKinsey, inference is set to surpass training as the most dominant workload in AI data centers by the end of the decade.

Meanwhile, as more time passes from the IPO, additional shares will hit the market. According to the company's prospectus, up to 19.4 million shares held by directors, officers, non-executive employees, and non-employee holders unlocked on Wednesday. That's equal to 8% of total shares outstanding.

Prior to that, up to 14.6 million shares have been unlocked for sale every two weeks since Aug. 19.

CEO Andrew Feldman and CTO Sean Lie, both minted billionaires by the IPO process, sold over $240 million of Class A shares between Aug. 20 and Sept. 25 under trading plans adopted shortly after the IPO. Other executives have also sold shares valued in the millions.

As of 11:38 AM ET, the Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC +1.19%) is up 1.18% to 27,191, hitting a record high as soft labor data boosted tech stocks. The S&P 500 (^GSPC +0.74%) has climbed 0.70% to 7,720, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (^DJI +0.54%) is trading 0.35% higher to 51,107.

Index

S&P 500 IndexToday's Change

(

0.74

%)

+

56.85

Index Level

7,723.30

Gold is trading at $4,141.21, down 0.90%, as the 10-Year Treasury yield rises 2 basis points to 5.25%. Most sectors were in the green, with industrials and consumer cyclicals leading the gainers, while energy and financial services stocks lagged.

Today's biggest movesTesla is surging more than 5% today after reporting better-than-expected vehicle deliveries. ON Semiconductor and Synaptics are surging after announcing a revised merger agreement. Integra LifeSciences is tumbling after lowering its financial guidance.

What this means for investorsStocks are rising today as investors process a September jobs report that shows an unexpected slowdown: The U.S. added 29,000 jobs last month, and unemployment rose to 4.2%. It may seem counterintuitive for markets to gain on signs of a cooling economy, but the data makes it less likely that the Federal Reserve will raise rates this month, and that is good for riskier assets. Traders now put the likelihood of an October rate hike at 21%, down from 64% last week.

Several semiconductor leaders, including Nvidia (NVDA +1.46%), set new all-time highs alongside the Nasdaq. Artificial intelligence (AI) enthusiasm is building again, particularly as investors eye the upcoming Anthropic IPO and the high demand for infrastructure. Nvidia's $150 billion in share buybacks only adds to confidence that the AI boom will continue.

Emma Newbery has positions in Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Intel, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool recommends ON Semiconductor and Synaptics. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Seeing that Nvidia Corp. (NASDAQ: NVDA) stock soared to a new all-time high (ATH) on October 2, 2026, driven by its strong fundamentals such as its recently announced $150 billion share repurchase program, Joseph Moore, a Wall Street analyst at Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), has set his 12-month price target and named this company his ‘top pick’ in the semiconductor industry.

Moore reiterated the bank’s Nvidia stock price target for the next 12 months at $300, according to a note sent to its clients on Friday. With NVDA stock trading at $234.4 at the time of reporting, Moore signals at a potential 28.02% upside by October 2, 2027.

Morgan Stanley maintained NVDA as its top pick in the Semiconductor sector after having recently hosted Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, and Colette Kress, the company’s CFO, for investor meetings.

The discussions highlighted Nvidia’s expanding customer base, strong demand across hyperscalers and frontier labs, and a strategic focus on boosting revenue per gigawatt.

Wall Street analysts sets Nvidia stock price target for 12 months Moore joined five other Wall Street analysts who have reaffirmed a bullish Nvidia stock price target since the company authorized a $150 billion share buyback on September 28, 2026.

As such, 31 Wall Street analysts surveyed by TipRanks over the past 3 months have set an average 12-month price target for NVDA at $324.32, thereby indicating a possible rally towards a new peak.

Nvidia stock price prediction. Source: TipRanks At press time, the highest 12-month Nvidia stock price prediction is $465 from Mark Lipacis at Evercore ISI, while the lowest is $275 from Thomas O’Malley at Barclays.

Is NVDA a good stock to buy? Although Nvidia stock rallied by more than 25% over the past 12 months, it has struggled to rally above a resistance level near $234. At press time, this company had a market capitalization of roughly $5.6 trillion.

NVDA stock chart for the past 12 months. Source: TradingView Nonetheless, Wall Street analysts, including at Morgan Stanley, expect further upside over the next 12 months.

Featured image via Shutterstock

Best Crypto Exchange for Intermediate Traders and Investors

Invest in cryptocurrencies and 3,000+ other assets including stocks and precious metals.

0% commission on stocks - buy in bulk or just a fraction from as little as $10. Other fees apply. For more information, visit etoro.com/trading/fees.

Copy top-performing traders in real time, automatically.

eToro USA is registered with FINRA for securities trading.

30+ million Users worldwide

eToro is a multi-asset investment platform. The value of your investments may go up or down. Your capital is at risk. Don’t invest unless you’re prepared to lose all the money you invest. This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong. Take 2 mins to learn more.

Join Finbold's newsroom, become a Sales Executive today! Apply now to join Finbold as a crypto/finance news writer!

Jason Ware believes the latest earnings season sets a bullish case for the tech trade, even if volatility keeps a hold on stocks short-term. When it comes to Nvidia (NVDA), he outlines why he still sees a bull case for the mega cap and explains how its business offers a lift for other Mag 7 names.

Two rare warning signals are flashing simultaneously in the stock market, a combination that has appeared only once before in 156 years of history, and what followed that prior occurrence wiped out nearly half the S&P 500.

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Wall Street has developed an extraordinary tolerance for risk. Artificial intelligence spending continues to fuel market optimism, investors are betting on years of expanding corporate profits, and stock valuations reflect expectations that leave little margin for error. 

Meanwhile, elevated borrowing costs and persistent inflation threaten to undermine those assumptions. None of this means the bull market has run its course. 

However, underneath the market’s continued resilience, two historical warning signals are flashing simultaneously. One suggests investors are paying too much for future earnings; the other shows just how much borrowed money is riding on those expectations. Together, they present a combination investors have good reason to take seriously.

A Valuation Seen Only Once Before According to the Case-Shiller PE Ratio’s historical data, the S&P 500 reached a 41.07 valuation yesterday, its second-highest valuation in 156 years of market history. Only November 1999, when the ratio reached 44.19, was higher.

Developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller, the cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE) measures stock prices against 10 years of inflation-adjusted earnings, smoothing out temporary economic fluctuations.

Here is how today’s reading fits into the historical narrative:

Market Period Shiller P/E Historical average 17.44 October 1929 32.6 December 2021 38.31 November 1999 peak 44.19 October 2026 41.07 Source: Robert Shiller’s historical dataset and Multpl.com.

Today’s market trades at approximately 2.35 times its historical average. More concerning, it exceeds the valuation recorded immediately before the 1929 market collapse and even the peak preceding the 2022 bear market.

The previous comparison is unsettling. Following the dot-com bubble, the S&P 500 declined 49% between March 2000 and October 2002, while the Nasdaq Composite lost approximately 78%.

Granted, today’s technology leaders, including Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA | NVDA Price Prediction), Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), and Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL), generate actual profits, unlike many internet companies that commanded extraordinary valuations in 1999.

Yet owning a wonderful business doesn’t automatically make its stock a wonderful investment at any price. At a CAPE of 41, investors are effectively paying $41 for every dollar of normalized annual earnings. That leaves precious little room for disappointing growth, shrinking margins, or interest rates remaining higher than anticipated.

History is repeating as a 156-year valuation record nears its breaking point. With $1.5 trillion in borrowed money on the line, the margin for error has vanished. Another Warning Makes This More Dangerous Valuations aren’t the market’s only vulnerability. Investors are borrowing unprecedented amounts to buy stocks.

According to the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), margin debt climbed from approximately $851 billion in April 2025 to a record $1.502 trillion in June 2026 — a 77% increase in just 14 months.

Although borrowing subsequently retreated, August’s latest available reading of $1.454 trillion remained 37% above its year-earlier level.

Similar borrowing surges preceded three painful market reversals:

2000: Margin borrowing jumped 80% before the dot-com collapse. 2007: Debt increased 66% ahead of the financial crisis and the S&P 500’s subsequent 57% decline. 2021: Borrowing climbed 95% before the 2022 bear market. The danger is that leveraged investors cannot always afford patience. Falling stock prices can trigger margin calls, forcing additional selling that accelerates an existing downturn.

Ironically, the same borrowing that helps propel stocks higher can become their undoing. A 20% decline in an unleveraged portfolio is painful but manageable for long-term shareholders. An investor using 50% borrowed money, however, could see approximately 40% of their original equity disappear from that same decline, excluding interest costs.

Key Takeaway In short, the CAPE ratio signals historically expensive stocks, while elevated margin debt creates another potential source of selling pressure.

Neither indicator can reliably identify when a correction will begin. Indeed, expensive markets can remain expensive for years, and investors shouldn’t abandon long-term holdings simply because valuations are stretched.

However, this is an appropriate time to reduce leverage, rebalance concentrated technology positions, and maintain cash reserves for opportunities. Dollar-cost averaging into broad-market funds can also reduce the temptation to make an all-or-nothing market-timing decision.

Smart investors don’t need to predict the next crash. They need portfolios capable of surviving one — and the flexibility to buy when others are forced to sell.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

By You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang at the White House. Prosecutors charged a California man with helping to smuggle $300 million worth of Nvidia chips to China. Bloomberg/Getty Images A California man is facing federal charges for helping smuggle over $300 million worth of Nvidia semiconductor chips into China, prosecutors said this week.

Yiu Kong Lui, 38, of San Gabriel, Cali., was arrested on Thursday and is set to be arraigned in federal court and charged with violating export controls, smuggling, and money laundering, court records show.

It is illegal to export advanced semiconductor chips into China without a license, as the US competes with the East Asian giant in the AI race.

President Donald Trump drew criticism last year for allowing Nvidia to sell its chips to China, a departure from the previous US policy under President Joe Biden, which effectively blocked all exports of advanced chips to China.

Nvidia's chips are especially sought after for use in AI data centers because they can perform multiple calculations simultaneously, and because the company's software stack is widely compatible.

In a press release, US officials said Liu put US national security at risk by smuggling the chips.

"Controlling the export of advanced SI technology is critical to safeguarding our national security and defending the homeland, and the FBI will keep fighting for America's businesses and economic security," said Roman Rozhavsky, an assistant director of the FBI's counterintelligence and espionage division.

It was not immediately clear on Friday whether Liu was being represented by an attorney. According to court records, Lui has not yet pleaded guilty or not guilty to the charges.

In a 22-page indictment, prosecutors said Liu worked with several co-conspirators who operated shell companies to first get the chips to either Malaysia or Singapore, and then into China.

Prosecutors said a company owned by Liu served as a go-between for foreign shipping companies and US chip manufacturers, and that Liu lied to US companies, claiming the chips wouldn't end up in China.

The operation began in 2023 and continued until August, according to the indictment. Liu's company was paid over $180 million by Malaysian shipping companies to broker the chip deals, prosecutors said.

If convicted of all charges, Liu could serve a combined 50 years in prison.

"This case shows yet again that smuggling is a losing proposition — legally, economically and technically," an Nvidia spokesperson said in a statement. "Our work with law enforcement has led to prosecutions, and we will continue to engage with law enforcement."

Read next

Truman Dickerson You're currently following this author! Click to unsubscribe from email alerts.

Truman Dickerson is the Weekend News Fellow at Business Insider, based in New York City. He covers trending tech and business news. He previously reported for The Boston Globe's Express Desk. He graduated from Boston University, where he served as editor in chief of The Daily Free Press, BU's student-run newspaper.Contact him at [email protected]

Donald Trump

Shares of Nvidia (NVDA) rose on Friday, touching a record $237.55 and pushing the chipmaker's market value to roughly $5.7 trillion.

The stock moved beyond its previous intraday high of $235.54 after opening at $236.05. The latest advance keeps Nvidia at the center of investor demand for companies supplying artificial intelligence infrastructure.

Nvidia's recent financial results provide a backdrop for the rally. Fiscal second-quarter revenue totaled $96.2 billion, up 106% from a year earlier, while Data Center revenue increased 117% to $89 billion. The company expects fiscal third-quarter revenue of about $108 billion.

Shareholder returns have also expanded. Nvidia returned about $26 billion through buybacks and dividends during the quarter, with around $99 billion still available under its repurchase authorization at the period's end.

The record valuation arrives as investors weigh continued AI infrastructure spending against competition from rival chipmakers and the growing use of custom processors by large technology companies.

Become a Premium Member to See This: (Free Trial):

List of 52-Week Lows, 52-Week Highs List of 3-Year Lows, 3-Year Highs List of 5-Year Lows, 5-Year Highs
Check the Warning Signs for

NVDA

now!

SummaryAs AI infrastructure demand rises, McKinsey projects the semiconductor market could reach $2.3T by 2030, up 44% from last year’s estimate.AI-driven earnings continue to surge, along with Wall Street’s expectations, despite concerns over concentration risk.S&P 500 tech sector earnings are expected to grow by 64% YoY in Q3 2026, led by industries tied to the AI buildout.SA quant identified 3 Strong Buy AI infrastructure stocks riding robust demand and bullish EPS revisions.I am Steven Cress, Head of Quantitative Strategies at Seeking Alpha. I manage the quant ratings and factor grades on stocks and ETFs in Seeking Alpha Premium. I also lead Alpha Picks, which selects the two most attractive stocks to buy each month, and also determines when to sell them. Getty Images

AI Infrastructure Boom Defies Market Anxiety Concerns over AI concentration risk, coupled with rising Treasury yields, have weighed on investor sentiment. However, despite this angst, corporate earnings are expected to continue growing, supported by a surge in AI-related investments, largely

101.87K Followers

Analyst’s Disclosure: I/we have no stock, option or similar derivative position in any of the companies mentioned, and no plans to initiate any such positions within the next 72 hours. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it. I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.

Seeking Alpha's Disclosure: Past performance is no guarantee of future results. No recommendation or advice is being given that any particular security, portfolio, transaction or investment strategy is suitable for any specific person. The author is not advising you personally concerning the nature, potential, value or suitability of any particular security or other matter. You alone are solely responsible for determining whether any investment, security or strategy, or any product or service, is appropriate or suitable for you based on your investment objectives and personal and financial situation. Steven Cress is the Head of Quantitative Strategy at Seeking Alpha. Any views or opinions expressed herein may not reflect those of Seeking Alpha as a whole. Seeking Alpha is not a licensed securities dealer, broker or US investment adviser or investment bank.

NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) is trending Friday after a week that included a record-breaking buyback authorization, a new AI safety platform and strong earnings from supplier Micron that lifted semiconductor stocks broadly.

Micron stock is trading at elevated levels. What’s next for MU stock? A Record Buyback AuthorizationOn September 28, NVIDIA’s Board of Directors authorized an additional $150 billion under the company’s existing share repurchase program, raising the total remaining authorization to $235 billion — the largest share repurchase authorization increase in history. The company expects to execute the remaining program through fiscal year 2028.

“NVIDIA’s growth is being driven by a once-in-a-generation platform shift to AI and accelerated computing,” said Jensen Huang, Founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Our cash generation gives us the capacity to invest in the technologies that advance this transformation and return capital to shareholders.”

Launching the Open Agent Safety PlatformNVIDIA also launched on Monday its Open Agent Safety Platform, consisting of OpenShell open-source software and the Sentry reference system design, intended to provide full-stack governance and control across the software and hardware running AI agents. OpenShell provides a secure runtime boundary on NVIDIA Vera CPUs that traces all agent actions and enforces policy, while Sentry adds an out-of-band watchdog running on NVIDIA BlueField-4 DPUs that can quarantine agents attempting to move outside their boundaries within milliseconds.

Industry partners joining the initiative include Anthropic, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Dell Technologies, Figure, HPE, Hugging Face, JPMorganChase, Microsoft, Palantir, Palo Alto Networks, Perplexity, Red Hat, Salesforce, SAP, Scale AI, ServiceNow, and SpaceXAI.

Micron’s Earnings Lift the SectorSeparately, Micron, one of NVIDIA’s key memory chip suppliers, reported fiscal fourth-quarter results on September 30 that beat expectations on both the top and bottom lines, with adjusted EPS of $33.42 against a consensus estimate of $31.45 and revenue up sharply year-over-year. The strong print reinforced confidence that AI infrastructure demand remains intact, lifting shares of NVIDIA, AMD and Intel higher on Thursday.

Read Next

NVIDIA Shares Edge HigherNVDA Price Action: At the time of publication, NVIDIA shares are trading 2.14% higher at $235.80, according to data from Benzinga Pro.

Image via Shutterstock

This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.

© 2026 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

Key Takeaways Gartner expects AI spending to reach $2.7 trillion in 2026, infrastructure accounting for $1.5 trillion.Sovereign AI investment and rising inference workloads are driving demand for chips and infrastructure.ETFs like CHAT offer distinct AI exposure, with year-to-date gains ranging from 29.1% to 58.3%. Artificial intelligence has evolved from a speculative theme into a core driver of global economic growth lately. But what is truly pulling investors toward AI-focused stocks and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in 2026 is not simply the technology’s promise — it is the growing body of evidence that AI adoption is accelerating across nearly every industry, with measurable productivity gains beginning to materialize.

The World Economic Forum’s September 2026 Chief Economists’ Outlook found that 97% of surveyed chief economists expect AI adoption to increase over the next 12 months — the highest level of consensus recorded on any issue in the survey. Importantly, 69% expect AI to unlock meaningful productivity gains, with benefits spreading across agriculture, energy, materials and construction within the next three years. 

This supports the theory that AI is no longer a technology story confined to Silicon Valley. It is a global economic transformation.

The financial commitment backing this transformation is staggering. Gartner forecasts worldwide AI spending to reach $2.7 trillion in 2026, a 49.5% year-over-year increase, with AI infrastructure alone accounting for nearly $1.5 trillion. This capital is flowing into data centers, semiconductors, networking equipment and power infrastructure — creating a multi-year investment cycle with no clear endpoint in sight.

Yet the performance gap between AI ETFs remains enormous. Some funds delivered spectacular returns, while others lagged significantly.

This divergence reflects a critical reality: not all “AI ETFs” are created equal. Funds target vastly different segments of the value chain, from high-margin generative software to capital-intensive hardware and industrial robotics. 

Against this backdrop, investors seeking meaningful returns need to make deliberate allocations and carefully select funds.

The guide below examines the core drivers that will sustain the AI rally, evaluates emerging headwinds and highlights four AI ETFs worth considering today.

Key Factors Keeping AI’s Momentum SteadyThe primary catalyst behind AI’s expansion has evolved from experimental pilots to full-scale enterprise deployment. 

While hyperscalers are pouring billions into AI, a significant new development in this space is the rise of sovereign AI as a structural demand floor. Governments are increasingly treating AI infrastructure and semiconductor capability as strategic national assets. The United Kingdom, for example, announced more than £6 billion in new AI investment and approximately 8,000 jobs during London Tech Week in June 2026, spanning chips, cloud infrastructure and autonomous vehicles.

This government-backed demand creates a non-cyclical foundation that persists even when private sector spending fluctuates.

The market is also entering a new phase driven by inference workloads. Gartner has forecasted that AI-optimized infrastructure-as-a-service spending will grow 96% in 2026, with inference spending surpassing training spending for the first time. This shift toward real-time AI execution — powering autonomous agents, customer service bots, and enterprise automation — is creating sustained, recurring cloud consumption patterns rather than one-time training investments.

Is This a Good Time to Invest in AI?While long-term fundamentals remain exceptionally strong, prospective investors must weigh the headwinds that have emerged over recent months.

A persistent disconnect exists between AI spending and measurable returns. PwC’s 2026 Global CEO Survey, covering 4,454 executives across 95 countries, found that only 12% of CEOs report AI delivering both cost and revenue benefits, while 56% see no significant financial benefit to date. This gap between investment and monetization has made markets increasingly unforgiving of aggressive spending without near-term yield.

Meta Platforms offers a cautionary example. Despite posting 28% year-over-year revenue growth in second-quarter 2026, the stock plunged 10% after management raised the lower end of its capital expenditure guidance to $130-$145 billion. The market’s message was clear: massive infrastructure bills require commensurate returns.

Valuation compression risk also persists. To this end, the September 2026 Economic Outlook has warned that returns on AI investment could disappoint or take longer to materialize than expected, especially if bottlenecks emerge for electricity or advanced semiconductors.

The report also noted that AI firms’ reliance on leverage and increasingly complex financing structures could amplify any sharp shift in investor sentiment.

That said, J.P. Morgan's late-September call — retaining a bullish stance on semis amid healthy fundamentals, pricing growth into 2027, and tight supply-demand conditions — suggests that the recent pullback has not materially weakened the sector’s longer-term outlook. As AI tools transition from early-adopter novelties into mission-critical business utilities, pure-play and broad-spectrum AI ETFs remain uniquely positioned to compound value over the next decade, offering a diversified alternative to individual stocks that carry concentrated earnings risk.

AI ETFs Worth Considering NowFor investors seeking diversified AI exposure without single-stock concentration risk, the following ETFs offer distinct approaches to capturing the sector’s growth:

Global X Artificial Intelligence & Technology ETF (AIQ - Free Report)  

This fund, with net assets worth $10.40 billion, offers exposure to 88 companies that stand to benefit from the further development and utilization of AI technology in their products and services, as well as in companies that provide hardware facilitating the use of AI for the analysis of big data. Palantir (PLTR - Free Report) holds the first spot in this fund, with 4.11% weightage. 

AIQ has rallied 29.1% year to date and charges 68 basis points (bps) in fees. It traded at a good volume of 1.21 million shares in the last trading session.

Roundhill Generative AI & Technology ETF (CHAT - Free Report)  

It is an actively managed fund and the world’s first Generative AI ETF, with assets under management (AUM) of $1.94 billion, offering exposure to 44 companies involved in the investment theme of artificial intelligence, generative artificial intelligence, and related technologies. NVIDIA (NVDA - Free Report) holds the first spot in this fund, with 6.89% weightage. 

CHAT has soared 58.3% year to date and charges 75 bps in fees. It traded at a volume of 0.24 million shares in the last trading session. 

ROBO Global Artificial Intelligence ETF (THNQ - Free Report)  

This fund, with net assets worth $495.2 million, includes 55 companies developing the technology and infrastructure enabling AI, such as computing, data and cloud-services, as well as companies that apply AI in various verticals, from business processes to e-commerce and healthcare, among others. DataDog holds the first spot in this fund, with 2.51% weightage. 

THNQ has surged 53.6% year to date and charges 68 bps in fees. It traded at a volume of 0.01 million shares in the last trading session. 

Alger AI Enablers & Adopters ETF (ALAI - Free Report)

This fund, with net assets worth $1.33 billion, provides exposure to 65 companies focusing on the development, adoption, or utilization of AI) technologies. NVDA holds the first spot in this fund, with 6.24% weightage. 

ALAI has risen 29.5% year to date and charges 58 bps in fees. It traded at a volume of 0.03 million shares in the last trading session.  

Since early August, all three of Wall Street's major stock indexes have catapulted to record highs. Although artificial intelligence (AI) has been the clear catalyst behind this move, it's the "Magnificent Seven" that have lifted the stock market to new heights. The Magnificent Seven consists of (in descending market cap):

Nvidia (NVDA +1.09%)Apple (AAPL -0.81%)Alphabet (GOOGL -1.70%)(GOOG -1.70%)Microsoft (MSFT -0.02%)Amazon (AMZN -0.37%)Meta Platforms (META +0.10%)Tesla (TSLA -0.20%)These trillion-dollar businesses are leaders within their respective industries, but this doesn't mean they're all worth buying. While there's a laundry list of ways to value stocks, arguably none work better for the Magnificent Seven than projected cash flow.

Image source: Getty Images.

The price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio is the go-to for most investors when quickly evaluating a public company. While the traditional P/E ratio works great for mature businesses, it struggles to tell the full story for high-growth stocks.

More importantly, all of the Magnificent Seven companies reinvest a substantial percentage of their cash flow into high-growth initiatives. This makes cash flow and projected cash flow, not the P/E ratio, the best measure to determine if a Magnificent Seven stock is a bargain or bloated.

According to Wall Street's consensus cash-flow-per-share estimates for 2027, as of Sept. 25, here's how the Magnificent Seven rank from most (i.e., cheapest) to least (i.e., priciest) attractive:

Amazon: 10.91 times estimated forward-year cash flowMeta Platforms: 11.84Microsoft: 15.39Nvidia: 15.6Alphabet: 16.11Apple: 30.48Tesla: 80.2Based solely on cash flow, Elon Musk's Tesla and iPhone maker Apple are the antithesis of a bargain. By comparison, dual-industry leader Amazon and social media titan Meta Platforms stand out as genuine bargains amid the second-priciest stock market in history.

Image source: Getty Images.

Amazon and Meta remain attractive amid a historically pricey stock marketFor the first time in several months, Amazon has leapfrogged Mark Zuckerberg's Meta to become the most attractive Magnificent Seven stock by future cash flow. Whereas Amazon closed out every year of the 2010s at 23 to 37 times its reported cash flow, shares can now be purchased for less than 11 times next year's projected cash flow.

Amazon is a beast on two fronts. While most investors know it's the kingpin of e-commerce, they might not realize that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also the global No. 1 cloud infrastructure services platform by total spend. Since Amazon integrated generative AI and large language model solutions into AWS, sales growth for this segment has reaccelerated.

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

90/100

Today's Change

(

-0.37

%) $

-0.92

Current Price

$

248.23

What's more, AWS is a considerably higher-margin operating segment than online retail sales. As it grows into a larger piece of the pie, Amazon's cash flow can grow at a much faster pace than sales.

Meanwhile, Meta's shares have surged following the early September release of its Muse personal AI assistant. Wall Street has been wondering how Meta would capitalize on its aggressive AI spending, and Muse offers a small taste of that.

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

78/100

Today's Change

(

0.10

%) $

0.75

Current Price

$

725.93

But don't overlook Meta's foundational social media platforms. Lost amid the AI hype is the 3.6 billion daily active people Meta's family of apps attracted, on average, in June. No other social media platforms come close to this figure, providing Zuckerberg's company with impressive ad-pricing power.

Sean Williams has positions in Alphabet, Amazon, and Meta Platforms. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.

Key Takeaways NVIDIA added $150 billion to its buyback authorization, lifting the remaining total to $235 billion.NVIDIA generated $21.34 billion in Q2 free cash flow and returned about $26 billion to shareholders.NVDA expects Q3 revenues to reach $108 billion, while the buyback may support EPS by reducing the share count. NVIDIA Corporation’s (NVDA - Free Report) latest decision to add $150 billion to its share repurchase authorization highlights the company’s strong cash generation and its willingness to return capital to investors. The increase brings the remaining authorization to $235 billion, with NVIDIA planning to execute the program through fiscal 2028. The increase in share repurchase authorization is the largest ever in the company’s history.

The scale of the program is supported by NVIDIA’s rapidly growing business. In the second quarter of fiscal 2027, revenues jumped 106% year over year to $96.2 billion, while Data Center revenues surged 117% to $89 billion. GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins were both 75%. In the second quarter, the company generated operating cash flow of $24.08 billion and free cash flow of $21.34 billion. These results show NVDA is generating substantial cash while continuing to invest heavily in AI infrastructure.

NVIDIA returned approximately $26 billion to shareholders during the second quarter through share repurchases and dividends. It repurchased $19.7 billion of stock and paid $6 billion in dividends during the quarter. In the first half of fiscal 2027, it generated operating and free cash flows of $74.42 billion and $69.9 billion, respectively. This provides a strong financial base for continued capital returns.

The buyback can also enhance shareholder value by reducing the number of outstanding shares, potentially supporting earnings per share over time. With AI demand accelerating and third-quarter revenues expected to grow 12% sequentially and reach $108 billion, the expanded authorization gives NVIDIA considerable flexibility to return excess cash while funding future growth.

How Do NVIDIA’s Peers Fare in Shareholder Return Policy?Broadcom Inc. (AVGO - Free Report) and Texas Instruments Incorporated (TXN - Free Report) are leveraging strong AI-driven cash generation to strengthen shareholder returns.

Broadcom has built a solid capital return strategy backed by robust cash flows. In the first three quarters of fiscal 2026, the company generated $31.9 billion in free cash flow, representing roughly 45% of revenues. Broadcom has consistently returned excess cash through dividends and share repurchases while continuing to invest in AI technologies. In the first nine months of fiscal 2026, it returned $18.3 billion to shareholders through share buybacks and dividend payments.

Texas Instruments is also benefiting from rising AI demand. The company generated free cash flow of $4.1 billion in the first half of 2026. During the period, it repurchased stocks worth $185 million and paid $2.6 billion in dividends. Supported by growth in industrial, automotive and data center markets, Texas Instruments appears well-positioned to generate higher cash returns for shareholders in the coming years.

NVIDIA’s Price Performance, Valuation and EstimatesShares of NVIDIA have risen around 23.8% year to date, outperforming the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s gain of 22.4%.

NVIDIA YTD Price Return Performance
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

From a valuation standpoint, NVDA trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 17.34, below the sector’s average of 19.95.

NVIDIA Forward 12-Month P/E Ratio
Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NVIDIA’s fiscal 2027 and 2028 earnings implies a year-over-year increase of approximately 93.9% and 65.8%, respectively. Estimates for fiscal 2027 and 2028 have been revised upward over the past 30 days.

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

NVIDIA currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Google builds its own AI chips, runs its own cloud, and controls its own models, yet still hands billions to NVIDIA every quarter. That uneasy relationship is starting to shift in ways that may not show up in revenue until…

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL | GOOGL Price Prediction) and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA) reported summer quarters showing the same AI boom from opposite sides. Google Cloud revenue grew 82% as Alphabet built out its TPU-powered stack. NVIDIA’s revenue rose 105.8% on demand from hyperscalers. Alphabet still buys NVIDIA systems while moving toward cheaper, more application-specific chips.

Google Cloud Surges While NVIDIA Sells Whole AI Factories Google Cloud brought in $24.77B, driven by enterprise AI infrastructure. Sundar Pichai said Alphabet’s “differentiated, full stack approach to AI is delivering real, measurable value.” Gemini processes 22 billion API tokens per minute, and Google can route that work to its own chips.

Free cash flow came in at negative $5.86B, and Alphabet suspended buybacks.

The Data Center segment at NVIDIA reached $89.02B, and networking grew 138%. Customers are buying complete systems. Jensen Huang said: “Now, compute is revenue.”

Business Driver Alphabet NVIDIA AI Chip Approach In-house TPUs plus NVIDIA GPUs Vera Rubin, Vera CPU, CUDA Q2 Capex $44.92B $2.68B Q2 Free Cash Flow -$5.86B $21.34B How Much Google Really Matters to NVIDIA NVIDIA does not report Google’s share of sales. Google sits inside a hyperscale category worth $49 billion, which grew 13% sequentially. Revenue from neoclouds, enterprises and government buyers reached $40 billion, and management expects non-hyperscalers to make up roughly half of the data center business.

Huang said many XPUs “are inference-specific chips for one cloud or one service.” That argument works less well against Google, which has the models, cloud and workloads.

Margins and Backlog Will Expose Any TPU Damage Watch NVIDIA’s gross margin, which management expects to bottom at 71% to 72% in Q4. If TPUs pull prices down, the margin line will show it first. Google Cloud’s backlog was over $460 billion after Q1. Google just launched Gemini 4 Argon, giving TPU capacity another major workload.

Why I Rate Alphabet’s Threat as Real but Slow-Moving NVIDIA’s outlook for about 70% fiscal 2028 growth is “supply-constrained.” As long as supply stays tight, TPUs Google uses can free up NVIDIA GPU supply for other buyers. Alphabet limits how far NVIDIA can grow later more than it threatens today’s sales.

NVIDIA generates far stronger cash flow, though its shares get 46 times earnings. Alphabet is priced at 15 times earnings while carrying heavy spending as the challenger.

Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.

In a sign of the financing crunch facing the hyperscalers financing the AI revolution, Amazon has announced it is raising prices on how much it charges to rent high-performance microchips as it reportedly is going to sell and then lease back Nvidia chips.

Nvidia's artificial intelligence chips keep making their way to China despite US curbs. Government officials are asking why the company missed red flags, saying Washington's export controls have spawned a sprawling shadow trade.

Nvidia's (NVDA +1.09%) Board of Directors authorized a $150 billon increase to its share repurchase program, bringing the total to $235 billion. The announcement was the largest single stock buyback authorization in U.S. corporate history.

For context, Toyota Motor -- which sells more cars than any other manufacturer in the world -- has a market cap of $223 billion.

Here's why Nvidia's buyback program is great news for investors, and why the bigger story is what Nvidia is doing with the rest of its cash.

Image source: Nvidia.

High margin revenue growth fuels free cash flow Nvidia's free cash flow (FCF) has exploded in recent years due to its rapid revenue growth and high margins. Nvidia returned 60% of FCF to investors through buybacks and dividends in the first half of fiscal 2027, and has a long-term target of returning at least 50% of FCF.

NVDA Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

Nvidia is converting around 75 cents of every dollar in sales into gross profit, 64 cents into bottom-line after-tax profit, and around 42 cents into FCF. Nvidia's growth and high margins are partly due to insatiable demand for artificial intelligence (AI) compute -- which is benefiting the broader semiconductor industry. But Nvidia also has a highly effective product development pipeline that has produced three new compute platforms in four years. These aren't marginal improvements either.

Its Grace Blackwell platform, announced in March 2024, was magnitudes better than Hopper, launched in March 2022. In January 2026, Nvidia announced its Vera Rubin platform. Compared to Blackwell, Rubin delivers a 90% reduction in inference costs and a 75% reduction in the number of graphics processing units (GPUs) needed for training.

Nvidia has been the poster child of the AI boom since OpenAI released ChatGPT to the public in November 2022. But it's what the company has developed since that should be getting more attention.

Nvidia began shipping Rubin in August and already expects it to account for 20% of data center revenue in the third quarter of fiscal 2027, which it will report in November. Demand for Rubin is so massive that Nvidia is guiding for 70% year-over-year revenue growth in fiscal 2028. Higher memory chip costs have yet to make a substantial dent in Nvidia's gross margins -- a testament to its pricing power.

Rubin's efficiency is not solely due to Nvidia's making a more powerful GPU. It's also because Rubin comes in a rack-scale offering that includes multiple chips and networking components, which Nvidia calls extreme co-design. This co-design allows Nvidia to control a larger share of the data center addressable market, and in turn, offers significant performance improvements for its customers that justify the high price tag. The Nvidia NVL72 is a plug-and-play offering for AI data centers that features seven new chip designs, including 72 Rubin GPUs and 36 Vera central processing units.

Premium Feature

Moneyball Superscore

95/100

Today's Change

(

1.09

%) $

2.48

Current Price

$

230.86

Innovating at the speed of light Nvidia's record buyback authorization is a product of its impeccable profitability and sheer size. It is not, however, a sign that the company is transitioning into a stodgy, low-to-moderate growth company.

In his book The Nvidia Way, author Tae Kim discusses how Nvidia's Speed of Light concept was an integral reason the company was able to endure an intensely competitive landscape in its early years. The concept is rooted in pushing the limits of what Nvidia's talent and resources can deliver under expedited timelines, rather than using prior accomplishments or competitors' actions as a yardstick.

In the 1990s, other chip companies would operate on a one to two-year product development cycle, which left them vulnerable to riding a big hit only to see their market share erode if their next launch failed. Nvidia fell into the same trap and almost went bankrupt multiple times. Nvidia then condensed its product launches to six months as a way to keep cash flow coming and avoid taking its competitive moat for granted.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang embodies Nvidia's relentless work culture to this day. Nvidia could have easily ridden the coattails of Blackwell for longer and kept Rubin in its back pocket, but Nvidia doesn't behave like the world's most valuable company. It behaves like a company that doesn't take its industry-leading position for granted.

Nvidia also recognizes that its heavy reliance on a handful of hyperscale customers leaves it vulnerable to cyclical spending pullbacks. This is why evolving beyond one-off chip sales to rack-scale data center solutions that deliver the greatest cost efficiency for its customers is so important. On top of that, Nvidia is making compute more accessible and transferable to a non-hyperscale customer base by partnering with financial institutions to create an investable AI infrastructure asset class. Third-party capital will fund the build-out of AI infrastructure that can be sold to AI labs, AI start-ups, cloud providers, and enterprises seeking the flexibility to use varying levels of compute without the risks and capital commitments of building it themselves.

Nvidia remains a high-octane growth stock A bloated buyback budget can sometimes indicate a company is out of good ideas and looking for ways to appease shareholders. But Nvidia's record authorization is simply a product of how profitable its business has become and of management's confidence in its roadmap to generate even higher FCF going forward as AI compute demand increases.

Nvidia's buyback announcement does not mean the company is taking its foot off the gas when it comes to AI innovation. Nvidia's culture still prioritizes organic growth over everything else. There's every reason to believe that will continue, given Nvidia's optimism about compute demand for agentic AI and physical AI, such as self-driving cars and robotics.

Nvidia's $500 billion financing initiative aims to turn AI compute into an investable infrastructure asset. Summary

Banks depreciate GPUs over three to four years, while Nvidia says top chips can generate revenue for up to a decade.

The leading provider of AI processors, Nvidia Corp. (NVDA, Financials), is encountering opposition from lenders to a $500 billion financing proposal that includes the use of its chips as collateral.

According to persons involved with financing conversations, banks and credit investors are looking for bigger guaranties as they wonder how much Nvidia's GPUs will be valued in a few years.

The dispute is significant because Nvidia needs institutional funding to support the massive infrastructure expenditures needed by AI developers. The business contends that its computing is a robust asset that can sustain long-term funding.

Lenders are adopting a more cautious stance. While Nvidia has claimed that its top processors may make money for up to ten years, banks usually depreciate GPUs over a period of three to four years.

Nvidia may be compelled to offer more robust guaranties, customer contracts, or other payback safeguards as a result of this discrepancy. According to the study, increased backing is anticipated for deals worth tens of billions of dollars.

The plan would make it easier for consumers to purchase Nvidia hardware, but more assurances would also make Nvidia more vulnerable in the event that chip prices or the economics of AI infrastructure decline.

The conditions of Nvidia's first significant chip-backed financing agreements and the amount of risk the business eventually maintains will be the next thing investors look out for.

Disclosures I/we have no positions in any stocks mentioned, and have no plans to buy any new positions in the stocks mentioned within the next 72 hours.

Click for the complete disclosure

Dan Deming focuses on rising software giants and existing hardware mega caps for Thursday's Big 3. He sees Cloudflare's (NET) steady rise as favorable for the stock's momentum, likes ServiceNow (NOW) as the company expands its customer base, and believes Nvidia (NVDA) will push into new record highs.