NEW YORK, December 29, 2025, 06:50 ET — Premarket
- Nvidia shares were down 1.1% in premarket trading as U.S. stock-index futures eased after last week’s record closes.
- Traders are watching Fed meeting minutes and weekly jobless claims in a thin, holiday-shortened week.
- Nvidia’s recent Groq technology-licensing deal kept focus on the next phase of AI chip demand: running models, not just training them.
Nvidia (NVDA.O) shares fell 1.1% in premarket trading on Monday, tracking a dip in U.S. stock-index futures after Wall Street ended last week at record highs.
The chipmaker’s early moves are closely watched because Nvidia has been a key proxy for investor appetite for artificial intelligence-linked stocks, a theme that has helped power U.S. equities in 2025.
That scrutiny is sharper in the final trading days of the year, when volumes can thin and small shifts in sentiment can swing big technology names. Investors are also watching for a “Santa Claus rally,” a seasonal stretch that covers the last five trading days of the year and the first two in January. Reuters
At 05:40 a.m. ET, S&P 500 e-mini futures were down 0.22% and Nasdaq 100 e-minis were down 0.40%. Dow e-minis were up 0.01%, Reuters data showed.
Wall Street’s main indexes closed flat on Friday but were set for December gains after a rally in technology stocks earlier in the month, following an upbeat forecast from Micron Technology (MU.O).
Nvidia’s premarket dip comes days after the company agreed to a “non-exclusive” license to inference chip technology from AI startup Groq and to hire Groq’s founder and chief executive, Jonathan Ross, along with other executives, Groq said in a blog post. Reuters
Inference is the stage where an AI model that has already been trained generates answers for users. It has become a battleground as customers try to cut the cost and time of running large models at scale.
“Antitrust would seem to be the primary risk here,” Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon wrote, pointing to regulatory scrutiny of deal structures that stop short of full acquisitions. Reuters
CNBC reported Nvidia had agreed to acquire Groq for $20 billion in cash, but neither Nvidia nor Groq commented on the report, Reuters reported. Groq said it would continue operating as an independent company with Simon Edwards as CEO.
Nvidia dominates chips used to train AI models, but faces stiffer competition in inference from traditional rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.O) as well as startups including Groq and Cerebras Systems, Reuters reported.
Other AI-linked shares also slipped in premarket trading, with Oracle (ORCL.N) down 1.6% and Tesla (TSLA.O) off 1.4%, in a broader pullback in big tech.
Nvidia closed at $190.53 on Friday, up about 1% on the day, according to Investing.com data.
On the macro calendar, minutes from the Federal Reserve’s previous meeting and weekly jobless claims are due later in the week, offering fresh read-through on how far and how fast rate cuts might extend into 2026.
The next major company catalyst is Nvidia’s quarterly report, due after the market closes on Feb. 25, according to Wall Street Horizon.
Until then, traders are likely to keep treating Nvidia’s stock as a pulse check on whether the year-end tech rally can hold up as investors weigh the cost of AI infrastructure against demand for chips that run models in real time.
