Published November 29, 2025
NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ: NVDA) is closing out November in full roller‑coaster mode. After becoming the first company in history to sail past a $5 trillion valuation earlier this year, the AI chip giant has seen its share price pull back to around $177, leaving its market cap near $4.3 trillion and wiping out roughly $200 billion in value over the past week alone. [1]
Yet under the hood, NVIDIA just posted another record quarter, guided for even more explosive growth, and remains the central supplier of AI compute to the world’s biggest tech platforms. The tension between flawless fundamentals and increasingly nervous investor psychology is exactly what’s shaping the NVIDIA stock story on November 29, 2025.
This article pulls together the key developments investors need to know today — from earnings and guidance to China, competition from Google and Meta, and the emerging “circular financing” debate around NVIDIA’s AI ecosystem.
NVIDIA stock today: price snapshot and recent pullback
As of the latest U.S. close (Friday, November 28), NVIDIA shares trade around $177, down about 1.8% on the day, according to both exchange data and independent market trackers. [2]
Over the last week, the Economic Times estimates that NVDA has shed nearly $200 billion in market value, with the stock dropping roughly 4.7% amid a wave of profit‑taking and skepticism about whether the AI boom can sustain NVIDIA’s current valuation. [3]
Some valuation models suggest the recent move is more of a reality check than a collapse. One widely cited intrinsic‑value analysis pegs NVIDIA’s “fair value” around $165 per share, implying the stock is still modestly overvalued but far less stretched after a mid‑teens percentage pullback from its recent peak. [4]
Even after that reset, NVIDIA remains the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, edging out Apple and Alphabet with a market cap of roughly $4.3 trillion. [5]
Blockbuster Q3 FY 2026 earnings: the fundamentals are still on fire
The volatility is arriving on the heels of one of the biggest earnings beats in corporate history.
On November 19, NVIDIA reported results for its third quarter of fiscal 2026 (three months ended October 26, 2025):
- Revenue: $57.0 billion
- +22% quarter‑over‑quarter
- +62% year‑over‑year [6]
- Data Center revenue: $51.2 billion
- +25% quarter‑over‑quarter
- +66% year‑over‑year, and now the overwhelming majority of total sales [7]
- Gaming: $4.3 billion, up about 30% year‑on‑year, roughly flat sequentially [8]
- Net income: $31.9 billion for the quarter, or about $1.30 per diluted share, up sharply from a year ago [9]
- Cash generation: Operating cash flow of $23.8 billion for the quarter underscores how quickly AI demand is translating into hard cash. [10]
Management also guided for roughly $65 billion in revenue next quarter, comfortably ahead of Wall Street expectations, with CEO Jensen Huang again insisting that talk of an “AI bubble” ignores the scale of infrastructure build‑out still to come. [11]
Analyst and industry commentary around the earnings paint a consistent picture: NVIDIA is still growing at an almost unprecedented pace for a mega‑cap, with its Blackwell‑generation GPUs and AI platforms sold out well into 2026 and an AI order pipeline estimated in the hundreds of billions of dollars. [12]
So why is NVIDIA stock falling now?
If the numbers are that good, why is the stock under pressure?
1. Profit‑taking after a $5 trillion high
NVIDIA’s rise has been historic. The company joined the $4 trillion club this summer and briefly touched $5 trillion in market value before slipping back to the $4.3 trillion area in recent weeks. [13]
After that kind of run, even small cracks in sentiment can trigger large swings in price. Global stock‑market commentary from Reuters, Investopedia and others show that tech and AI names have repeatedly led both rallies and selloffs throughout November, with NVIDIA often at the center of these moves. [14]
2. AI bubble fears and macro jitters
Several recent market wrap‑ups described NVIDIA as the “poster child” for AI exuberance, highlighting that any hint of slower cloud spending, tighter financial conditions or geopolitical risk now tends to hit NVDA first, then ripple outward to the rest of big tech. [15]
Commentators from Business Insider and others note that November has been a “bumpy” month: NVIDIA entered it at all‑time highs, only to run into a wall of AI bubble debate, questions about capital intensity, and concerns that some customers might be over‑building capacity. [16]
3. Competition from Google and Meta’s AI chips
The most immediate trigger for one of the sharpest down‑days this month was news that Meta Platforms is in talks to spend billions of dollars on Google’s custom AI chips (TPUs) for its data centers starting around 2027, possibly renting TPU capacity from Google Cloud as early as 2026. [17]
Reports from Reuters, The Information and multiple financial outlets suggest that such a deal could eventually divert a meaningful fraction of Meta’s AI spend away from NVIDIA if it materializes. Market commentary estimates Meta’s AI infrastructure budget in the tens of billions of dollars per year, with NVIDIA currently capturing the lion’s share. [18]
On the day those reports surfaced, NVIDIA shares fell between 3–4% while Alphabet’s stock moved higher, reflecting growing investor awareness that Google’s TPUs may become a serious alternative to NVIDIA’s GPUs for some workloads. [19]
Meta is not abandoning NVIDIA — its near‑term training clusters remain overwhelmingly GPU‑based — but the signal is clear: hyperscalers are working hard to ensure they’re not permanently locked into a single supplier.
China: from growth engine to geopolitical pressure point
Another major piece of the puzzle is NVIDIA’s China exposure, which has gone from growth driver to risk factor in less than two years.
Sales collapse and ‘disappointment’ in China
NVIDIA disclosed that its China‑related business has slumped sharply due to escalating U.S. export controls and Beijing’s own efforts to reduce reliance on U.S. chips. In interviews and coverage of the Q3 results, the company said it is “disappointed” with its China performance, noting that its China‑specific H20 AI chip generated only around $50 million in sales in the quarter. [20]
Overall sales to China, including Hong Kong, are reported to be down by more than 60% year‑over‑year, even as total company revenue has soared. [21]
Beijing pushes ByteDance and others off NVIDIA
The pressure is not only coming from Washington. Chinese regulators have blocked TikTok parent ByteDance from using NVIDIA chips in new data centers, pushing the company and others toward domestic AI processors as part of a broader tech‑sovereignty agenda. [22]
At the same time, a Reuters report this week notes that major Chinese tech firms including Alibaba and ByteDance are increasingly training their large AI models in overseas data centers to access NVIDIA chips while sidestepping U.S. export restrictions — a workaround that could persist but is inherently fragile. [23]
U.S. policy decisions still in flux
On the U.S. side, the Trump administration is reportedly weighing whether to allow NVIDIA to sell its advanced H200 AI chips to China, a decision that could meaningfully affect the company’s future access to that market. [24]
For now, however, the combination of U.S. restrictions and Chinese policy responses has turned China into a swing factor for NVIDIA — a source of upside if rules loosen, and of further downside if restrictions broaden or enforcement tightens.
Short sellers, ‘circular financing’ and NVIDIA’s seven‑page memo
Beyond macro and geopolitics, NVIDIA is also dealing with a more esoteric — but closely watched — controversy: whether its explosive AI growth is being juiced by aggressive financing of its own customers.
A small, bearish research letter recently accused NVIDIA of engaging in a “circular financing scheme,” suggesting the company was investing in or lending to cash‑burning AI firms that then spent heavily on NVIDIA GPUs, echoing tactics once used by Lucent and others in the dot‑com era. Legendary short seller Jim Chanos pointed to those historical examples as cautionary tales. [25]
In response, NVIDIA sent a seven‑page memo to Wall Street analysts explicitly rejecting the claim that it relies on “vendor financing” — arrangements where a supplier funds its customers in order to book sales. The company argued that: [26]
- Its core business is “economically sound,” with transparent reporting;
- It does not depend on vendor financing to grow revenue;
- Customers typically pay their bills in a matter of weeks, not years.
NVIDIA has indeed invested in several key AI customers — including high‑profile start‑ups such as OpenAI, xAI and specialized cloud providers like CoreWeave — which makes the ecosystem look tight‑knit and, to skeptics, somewhat circular. [27]
The company’s argument is essentially that equity investments plus brutal demand for its chips are a feature, not a bug — and that its GAAP and non‑GAAP results, including huge free‑cash‑flow generation, stand in sharp contrast to the accounting manipulations that doomed past tech darlings.
What commentators and experts are saying right now
Bullish camp: “Sentiment shock, not fundamental shock”
The Economic Times summarized the recent turbulence as a sentiment‑driven selloff, quoting CNBC host Jim Cramer, who argued that the stock’s slide reflects a “fear wave,” not a collapse in NVIDIA’s earnings power. He framed the setback as a potential opportunity for investors who still believe in the long‑term AI thesis. [28]
Business Insider’s recap of NVIDIA’s earnings emphasized that the company continues to sit at the center of a half‑trillion‑dollar AI infrastructure build‑out, with strong demand for its latest Blackwell chips and a deep pipeline of orders from hyperscalers and AI start‑ups. Several major research houses — including CFRA, UBS and Bank of America — remain bullish, with price targets in the roughly $230–$270 range. [29]
Skeptical camp: “Valuation gravity and customer concentration risk”
On the other side, a growing number of strategists warn that no company can compound at this pace forever. Concerns include:
- Valuation risk: Even after the pullback, NVDA trades at a premium to other mega‑caps on most metrics. Some intrinsic‑value models still show the stock modestly above fair value around $165. [30]
- Customer concentration: A huge portion of NVIDIA’s revenue depends on a small set of hyperscale cloud and social platforms. Deals like the proposed Meta–Google TPU arrangement highlight how quickly that spending could begin to diversify. [31]
- Infrastructure and demand timing: AI companies may be racing to deploy hardware faster than real monetization catches up, raising the risk of a future digestion period or capex slowdown. [32]
Some analyses now frame the NVIDIA investment debate as a question of “duration of dominance”: how long can the company maintain its current near‑monopoly in cutting‑edge AI accelerators before internal chips from Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon meaningfully erode its share?
Key risks and catalysts for NVDA investors to watch
Putting today’s news together, a few themes stand out as especially important from here:
- AI capex trends at hyperscalers
Quarterly guidance and commentary from Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and other big customers on their 2026–2027 AI infrastructure budgets will directly shape NVIDIA’s growth runway. Meta’s potential multi‑billion‑dollar TPU deal with Google is just the first visible move. [33] - U.S.–China export control policy
Any decision on H200 exports, additional chip restrictions, or Chinese anti‑monopoly probes could meaningfully change NVIDIA’s ability to serve the world’s second‑largest AI market. [34] - China’s domestic AI chip push and offshore workarounds
Beijing’s efforts to push firms like ByteDance and Alibaba toward local chips — and the parallel strategy of training models in Southeast Asian data centers — will determine whether NVIDIA’s China revenue stabilizes or continues to slide. [35] - Short‑seller scrutiny and financing structure
Any fresh evidence about how NVIDIA funds its ecosystem — or whether AI start‑ups can service their GPU leases and cloud bills if markets turn — could revive the “circular financing” narrative. [36] - Execution on next‑gen platforms (Blackwell and beyond)
NVIDIA’s ability to scale manufacturing, improve energy efficiency and keep its software stack (CUDA, networking, orchestration tools) ahead of rivals will remain a core competitive moat, especially as Google, AMD and others intensify their AI chip efforts. [37]
Bottom line: a world‑class business with a very human level of volatility
As of November 29, 2025, NVIDIA sits in a strange but familiar place for market history:
- Fundamentals: astonishingly strong, with record revenue, enormous margins, and a chokehold on the supply of state‑of‑the‑art AI compute. [38]
- Stock behavior: increasingly sensitive to every rumor about competition, policy shifts, and the durability of the AI spending wave — and capable of erasing or adding hundreds of billions in value in a single week. [39]
For investors, the question is less whether NVIDIA is important to AI — that case is as strong as ever — and more how much of that importance is already priced into the shares, and how comfortable they are riding out violent swings as the AI gold rush evolves.
References
1. www.smartkarma.com, 2. www.smartkarma.com, 3. m.economictimes.com, 4. finance.yahoo.com, 5. companiesmarketcap.com, 6. nvidianews.nvidia.com, 7. nvidianews.nvidia.com, 8. futurumgroup.com, 9. nvidianews.nvidia.com, 10. nvidianews.nvidia.com, 11. www.businessinsider.com, 12. www.businessinsider.com, 13. en.wikipedia.org, 14. www.reuters.com, 15. www.reuters.com, 16. www.businessinsider.com, 17. www.reuters.com, 18. www.reuters.com, 19. www.reuters.com, 20. finance.yahoo.com, 21. finance.yahoo.com, 22. www.reuters.com, 23. www.reuters.com, 24. www.reuters.com, 25. m.economictimes.com, 26. m.economictimes.com, 27. m.economictimes.com, 28. m.economictimes.com, 29. www.businessinsider.com, 30. finance.yahoo.com, 31. www.reuters.com, 32. timesofindia.indiatimes.com, 33. www.reuters.com, 34. www.reuters.com, 35. www.reuters.com, 36. m.economictimes.com, 37. futurumgroup.com, 38. nvidianews.nvidia.com, 39. m.economictimes.com
