NEW YORK, Jan 13, 2026, 06:41 (EST) — Premarket
AI shares showed a mixed picture in early trading Tuesday as Nvidia clarified its payment terms for the H200 AI chips. The company said Chinese buyers aren’t required to pay upfront and emphasized it won’t charge for products not delivered. Nvidia (NVDA) edged up 0.03% to $184.94. (Reuters)
This matters because China policy risk has long been a red flag for Nvidia bulls: a single tweak in approval rules can freeze a backlog into stranded capital. Reuters reported on Jan. 8 that Nvidia requested some Chinese buyers to pay in full upfront for H200 orders, with little room to cancel or adjust—shifting the risk squarely onto customers. (Reuters)
Traders were also watching for the U.S. inflation report due at 8:30 a.m. ET, a release known to rattle high-growth tech stocks by shifting bond-yield expectations. Economists surveyed by Reuters forecast the consumer price index rose 0.3% in December, with the core CPI — excluding food and energy — expected to climb by the same margin. (Bureau of Labor Statistics)
Chip stocks tied to the AI surge showed strength: Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) climbed roughly 2.2% in premarket, Broadcom (AVGO) picked up 2.1%, and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing’s U.S.-listed shares (TSM) jumped 2.5%. These three often move together when investors bet on more runway in the data-center spending cycle.
Palantir (PLTR) climbed 1.1% to $179.41 following an upgrade from Citi analyst Tyler Radke, who flagged an incoming commercial and government “supercycle.” Radke bumped the rating to Buy/High-Risk from Neutral, while Barron’s reported that he lifted the price target to $235 from $210. (Seeking Alpha)
Nvidia’s latest China update was overshadowed by a healthcare move: the company and Eli Lilly (LLY) announced Monday they’ll invest $1 billion over five years in a joint research lab near San Francisco, centered on Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin chips. Lilly’s shares ticked up 1.6% in premarket trading. Nvidia healthcare VP Kimberly Powell said they’re adding “incremental resources” to a facility whose exact site will be revealed in March. (Reuters)
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang called the partnership a move to “invent a new blueprint for drug discovery.” Lilly CEO David Ricks added that combining data with computing power “could reinvent drug discovery as we know it.” The companies plan to start work at the lab in South San Francisco early this year. (NVIDIA Newsroom)
Thermo Fisher Scientific announced Monday a strategic partnership with Nvidia to enhance AI-driven lab automation and link instruments with AI software. Gianluca Pettiti, Thermo Fisher’s executive vice president, said combining AI with automation will “transform how scientific work is performed.” (Thermo Fisher Scientific Investors)
SK Hynix, a major supplier to Nvidia, announced plans to pour 19 trillion won ($12.9 billion) into a state-of-the-art chip-packaging plant in South Korea. Construction is set to kick off in April, with a goal to wrap up by the end of 2027. The company highlighted growing demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the stacked DRAM crucial for powering AI processors efficiently. According to Macquarie, SK Hynix controlled 61% of the HBM market last year. (Reuters)
Meta Platforms announced its new “Meta Compute” project to manage its data-center operations and supplier network, targeting what CEO Mark Zuckerberg describes as superintelligence. The company plans to develop “tens of gigawatts” of computing capacity over this decade. Meta’s shares dropped 1.7% in premarket trading. (Reuters)
Apple plans to integrate Google’s Gemini models into a redesigned Siri later this year, Reuters reported, marking a multi-year partnership. This deal extends Alphabet’s momentum after its market cap flirted with $4 trillion on Monday. In premarket action, Alphabet (GOOGL) climbed roughly 1%, while Apple (AAPL) inched up 0.3%. (Reuters)
The tape remains hostage to policy and rates. Any unexpected inflation spike could push Treasury yields higher, weighing on richly valued AI stocks. Meanwhile, uncertainty around chip approvals and export rules in China persists.
Investors’ attention remains fixed on the hardware pipeline: Taiwan Semiconductor will hold its fourth-quarter earnings call on Jan. 15 at 1 p.m. ET, offering clues on advanced chip demand. Nvidia is set to release its quarterly results on Feb. 25. Meanwhile, the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, running through Jan. 15, has already sparked a series of AI-related deals. (TSMC)
