Nvidia stock rises as CEO Jensen Huang touts ‘insane’ chip demand

By Investor Empires On Oct 3, 2024

Nvidia (NVDA) stock jumped as much as 5% on Thursday as CEO Jensen Huang said demand for next-generation Blackwell chips was “insane.”

In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday after the market closed, Huang confirmed that the chips are in “full production” despite recent design issues that have caused some delays in rolling out to customers.

“Blackwell is going as planned,” Huang said. “Everyone wants to have more and everyone wants to be first.”

Blackwell’s delays have spooked investors, with many eyeing the offering as the chipmaker’s next big catalyst after a recent stock decline fueled by a mid-July selloff from the unwinding of the yen carry trade.

Since then, markets have seen an exit from major technology companies while other macroeconomic factors, such as Chinese trade concerns, have also hampered Nvidia’s stock price.

But investors and analysts alike remain largely confident in the trajectory of AI trading. Nvidia stock is still up nearly 170% over the past 12 months and more than 2,700% over the past five years. Year-to-date, Nvidia has gained nearly 150%.

90% of Wall Street analysts recommend buying the stock, and a majority expect shares to rise to about $147.60 over the next year, according to Bloomberg estimates.

On top of Blackwell’s latest update, Nvidia’s move to the upside also comes with the company backing ChatGPT developer OpenAI (MSFT) in its latest funding round. Which concluded on Wednesday.

OpenAI has raised an additional $6.6 billion to reach a valuation of $157 billion in another bullish sign for the AI boom.

Gil Loria, senior software analyst at DA Davidson, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance that “there’s a direct flow from the funding round announced today to Nvidia” because of data center demand that would benefit the chipmaker. “That’s why the stock went up today,” he said.