Once again there seems to be no stopping Nvidia. As we wait for the tech giants’ quarterly reports, the company’s stock price is already rising.

Shoot your shares to a record price without making an announcement yourself: only Nvidia can do that these days. Shares of the GPU specialist reached $138 per share last night: a record for the company. This brings Nvidia’s total market value to $3.4 trillion.

The stock market is preparing for the quarterly reports expected this week from Microsoft, Meta, Google and Amazon. However, we can already predict that companies will announce major investments in AI infrastructure.

“Disturbed Demand” to Blackwell

And that is of course good news for Nvidia: CEO Jensen Huang sees “disturbed demand” for the upcoming Blackwell GPUs despite production problems. Anyone who didn’t order on time seems to have had bad luck. The chips are now expected to be sold out for the next twelve months.

Ironically, August’s quarterly reports triggered a wave of (excessive) panic among investors. Stagnating profit margins at Nvidia despite record sales and exploding spending by its customers caused the stock market world to doubt the profitability of AI. This panic now seems to be behind us: everything can change so quickly on the stock market.

Buccaneers on the coast

Nvidia has long had a monopoly with its GPUs, but that could change. AMD in particular is positioning itself as Nvidia’s challenger in the AI ​​scene. Last week in San Francisco we witnessed the announcement of the new generation of Instinct accelerators, in direct competition with Hopper and Blackwell. To a lesser extent, Nvidia also has to reckon with competition from Intel’s Gaudi 3.

In China, competition comes from surprising sources. Huawei is ready to replace Nvidia there. Nvidia is hampered in China by US trade restrictions that only allow it to ship low-end GPUs. Chinese companies are still trying to get their hands on the coveted Nvidia GPUs through illegal trading.