NEW YORK, July 9, 2026, 08:01 (EDT)
Nvidia stock rose in premarket trade Thursday. Shares built on big gains from Wednesday. Reports said China could let a few leading AI companies buy some of Nvidia’s H200 chips.
Nvidia shares were at $205.30 before the bell at 7:38 a.m. EDT, up 0.6% from where they finished Wednesday. The stock ended at $204.12 on Wednesday, rising 3.65% and giving the company a market cap of about $4.94 trillion, MarketWatch data show.
Nvidia’s valuation and its big presence in U.S. indexes mean there’s little space for troubles from China right now. The H200 AI processor, used to train and run big models, had seen slow sales in China. U.S. export rules and more orders going to Chinese suppliers hurt demand.
China will allow Alibaba, ByteDance and DeepSeek to purchase a limited number of Nvidia H200 chips, The Information reported, cited by Reuters. The group may receive under 200,000 chips, which is less than half what they had originally asked for. Nvidia, U.S. government and Chinese officials did not reply to Reuters’ request for comment.
The short-term bull case here isn’t about a full reopening, just a slight opening. In May, Reuters said the U.S. had approved about 10 Chinese companies to buy H200 chips. That list had Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, and JD.com. Still, there hadn’t been any shipments yet, since the deals were caught between Washington’s security rules and Beijing’s tech policies.
There was new demand talk as well. SpaceXAI on Wednesday said its Grok 4.5 model was trained using tens of thousands of Nvidia GB300 GPUs, the specialized chips used for AI work. Elon Musk posted on X that Grok 4.5 is “Opus-class,” but runs with better speed and lower costs, according to Reuters. Reuters
Bank of America’s Vivek Arya told investors there’s still a case for Nvidia. Arya, quoted by MarketWatch, said the market is too negative on Nvidia and overlooking what he called an “enhanced” chance to buy. Arya pointed out Nvidia shares are up only around 3% for the year through Monday while the PHLX Semiconductor Index has advanced more than 80%. MarketWatch
Futures were stronger early Thursday, with Nasdaq 100 futures gaining 0.63% by 5:27 a.m. ET as oil prices backed off two-week highs following another round of U.S.-Iran tensions. Mark Haefele, CIO at UBS Global Wealth Management, said the path to a longer-term peace deal looked “bumpy,” telling Reuters that market swings are still likely when tensions flare. Reuters
Peer action was mixed. Broadcom jumped nearly 5% Wednesday after Apple said it would buy over $30 billion in chips from the company in the next five years. Nvidia added 3.7%, Dow Jones Newswires reported. Advanced Micro Devices is still a direct AI chip rival. But a bigger question is that customers like Meta are working to make more of their own silicon.
Meta plans to begin making its own AI chip, dubbed Iris, in September, according to an internal memo seen by Reuters. The company is targeting a boost in computing power to 14 gigawatts next year. Meta is teaming up with Broadcom and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co for the project. The move may cut its reliance on suppliers like Nvidia and AMD, but Meta still buys a lot of GPUs.
France’s competition watchdog said Thursday it’s almost done with its Nvidia investigation. General rapporteur Umberto Berkani told reporters, “We are nearing the end of the investigation.” The probe is tied to claims of anti-competitive behavior. Shares could take a hit if regulators come down hard, China approvals miss, or cloud customers slow AI orders. The stock’s priced for big execution. Reuters
China’s AI push could pose a new risk for Nvidia. DeepSeek is working on its own AI inference chip, Reuters reported this week, citing three sources. “Nvidia is at zero in China and staying there,” Richard Windsor at Radio Free Mobile told Reuters. Windsor added that DeepSeek likely can’t sell chips outside China without top-tier manufacturing. Reuters
Nvidia is still locked into the main drivers that have powered the U.S. market for over a year: AI bets, China, and the big names at the top of the index. The main New York session hadn’t started yet, but futures pointed up. Traders looked ready to pay up for Nvidia, despite lingering questions.
