China Uncertainty Clouds Nvidia’s AI Progress Report

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On Wednesday afternoon, Nvidia Corp. revealed that it’s doing pretty well. In its quarterly earnings report, the chip giant projected third-quarter sales that would be $20 billion more than in the same period a year ago, a 54% increase. Its data center division is now bigger than any other company in the chip industry by revenue, and Nvidia earns more in sales in one quarter than rivals Intel Corp. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. do in a year. It’s on course to pass $300 billion in annual revenue in the next couple of years, at which point it will account for about a third of the chip industry’s total, according to analyst projections. When the US markets opened on Thursday, Nvidia was worth $1.3 trillion more than it was a year earlier, an increase that’s larger than the total market value of all but six other companies on the S&P 500.

For at least a week, Wall Street had been holding its breath in anticipation of this earnings report, which has been widely billed as a key way to gauge whether there’s a bubble in artificial intelligence (because Nvidia makes the equipment that powers the whole industry), to see whether a turn is coming in US financial markets (because it’s the single largest stock on the S&P 500) and to take the temperature of the US-China relationship (because its products are at the center of the technological rivalry between the two global superpowers).

The results were stellar, a bit disappointing and ultimately inconclusive. Although Nvidia’s revenue forecast was in line with the average Wall Street estimate, it fell far short of what bullish analysts were expecting. The report stoked fears of a deceleration in a two-year building boom in AI data centers, and it included a reminder that Nvidia is heavily dependent on a handful of customers for its revenue. Chief Executive Officer Jensen Huang shrugged off any concerns, saying the “opportunity ahead is immense.” The stock bounced around on Wednesday evening and in premarket trading, then declined when US markets opened on Thursday.

The issue left unresolved on Wednesday was one of the biggest wild cards Nvidia has been facing for the past several years: China. The company didn’t report any data center revenue from the country in its second-quarter earnings and third-quarter forecast, saying there’s still too much moving around for it to be sure where Washington and Beijing will land.

Since the Biden administration, the US government has hammered Nvidia with increasing restrictions on exports of AI chips to China, part of a broader national security strategy based on the conviction that Chinese AI development is a significant threat. When the Trump administration relented this month and said it would allow the sale of some less powerful components to Chinese customers, Beijing told government agencies and some local companies to stay away from Nvidia components.  So long as no agreement exists, it’s impossible to know whether China ends up being a boon for Nvidia in the Trump era, or a bust.

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