NEW YORK, March 22, 2026, 15:52 (EDT)
Nvidia slipped 3.1% to close at $172.70 on Friday, wiping out gains from news of a fresh Amazon cloud partnership that once again highlighted the hunger for its AI chips. The drop trimmed Nvidia’s market value to roughly $4.53 trillion.
Nvidia still sets the tone for whether the flood of AI data center cash is sticking around. But Friday illustrated how even a blowout headline can get drowned out—oil spikes and renewed jitters over rates, all pushed by the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, left Wall Street rattled.
Amazon Web Services has committed to picking up 1 million Nvidia GPUs through 2027, with deliveries kicking off this year. “Inference is hard. It’s wickedly hard,” Nvidia VP Ian Buck told Reuters. The agreement covers seven Nvidia inference chips—these are used during the phase when AI models respond to user input. Reuters
Bulls are sticking to their outlook. According to TheStreet on Sunday, Goldman Sachs maintained its $250 price target following Nvidia’s GTC developer conference. Wedbush’s Dan Ives, for his part, described Nvidia as “alone at the top of the AI mountain.” TheStreet
Even so, sentiment soured for high-valuation tech stocks. According to Reuters, rate futures now suggest the Fed could be hiking rates rather than cutting before 2026 wraps up. ING’s Padhraic Garvey summed it up as a “classic environment that is pushing rates up.” Shares of Advanced Micro Devices slid 1.9% Friday, while Broadcom dropped 2.8%. Reuters
Nvidia is pushing hard on inference—the process where AI responds on the fly, not just learning but doing. This week, Reuters said Nvidia is tailoring Groq chips for the Chinese market. There, inference competition is stiffer than training, with local names like Baidu rolling out their own silicon.
The risk side isn’t tough to spot. Analyst Richard Windsor flagged that Nvidia’s hold “not nearly as strong in inference,” pointing to cracks in its position. And the Justice Department’s chief antitrust official singled out deal types like acquihires—moves that scoop up teams and tech minus an outright acquisition—as a “red flag” in the wake of Nvidia’s licensing tie-up with Groq. Reuters
Nvidia keeps setting a tough standard, cranking out big numbers quarter after quarter. Back in February, it posted January-quarter revenue of $68.13 billion and projected current-quarter sales around $78 billion—both topping Wall Street’s targets. The shares hardly budged. TECHnalysis Research’s Bob O’Donnell pointed out that, so far, “not showing up yet” are any signs of an AI slowdown in these results. Reuters
