NEW YORK, March 18, 2026, 9:08 AM EDT
Nvidia stock barely budged early Wednesday. Word came that Beijing greenlit sales of its H200 AI chip in China, and sources said the company was also lining up a China-specific Groq chip. Shares recently traded at $181.93, off $1.22 from Tuesday’s close as of 8:53 a.m. EDT. Reuters
This soft reaction stands out. After Jensen Huang pitched Nvidia’s AI chip potential as possibly exceeding $1 trillion by 2027 during his GTC keynote on Monday, the stock spiked, but the gains faded before the bell. Investors still seem to be waiting for something new to spark momentum. Reuters
Huang said Tuesday that Nvidia has resumed H200 production, now that it’s got U.S. export licenses and purchase orders in hand. “Our supply chain is getting fired up,” he told reporters. Reuters
The U.S. cleared limited H200 shipments to select customers in China, according to an SEC filing from late February. Now, sources tell Reuters that Nvidia has secured approval from Beijing as well, giving the green light to sell to numerous clients there—a market that used to account for 13% of Nvidia’s revenue. Reuters
At GTC, Huang shifted the focus to inference—the part where AI systems perform tasks or respond to prompts, not just learn from data. “The inference inflection has arrived,” he said. Bob O’Donnell, president of Technalysis Research, called the announcements a move that “upleveled the entire discussion” about AI infrastructure. Reuters
Nvidia bumped up its forecasted revenue potential for Blackwell and Rubin—the company’s current and upcoming AI chip families—to at least $1 trillion by 2027. That estimate, CEO Jensen Huang noted, leaves out any renewed H200 sales to China. Jacob Bourne, analyst at eMarketer, said the higher goal signals “durable demand for Nvidia’s AI infrastructure” as the technology heads toward broader rollout. Reuters
The competition heats up in inference. Nvidia finds itself up against Google’s tailor-made chips and Intel’s grip on CPUs, and a Groq version customized for China could hit in May. Reuters
Still, plenty of investors are on the sidelines. Following February results, some shareholders fretted over Nvidia’s aggressive reinvestment into the AI ecosystem with no clear payoff, and Bourne flagged back then that “the competitive picture is also shifting” as customers start to look at AMD and roll out their own chips. Adding to the caution, hotter U.S. producer-price numbers out Wednesday dented hopes for imminent Fed rate cuts—a scenario that tends to weigh on appetite for high-multiple tech. Reuters
That goes a long way toward explaining Nvidia’s muted move, despite the week’s barrage of headlines. Shares climbed Monday alongside a broader AI surge, and Micron’s numbers on Wednesday helped keep interest alive, but as of Wednesday morning, Nvidia was stuck around $182. Right now, traders are looking for concrete shipments—orders alone aren’t cutting it. Reuters
