New York, Feb 17, 2026, 4:42 PM EST — After-hours
- Nvidia jumped in after-hours trading following news of a multiyear chip supply deal with Meta.
- Eyes are on Big Tech’s AI investments and if they’re still fueling demand as Nvidia’s Feb. 25 earnings approach.
Nvidia tacked on roughly 1.2% in after-hours trading Tuesday. Meta Platforms barely budged. The rest of the AI-heavy megacaps showed a scattered picture.
Wall Street was back from the long weekend, with investors still probing whether pouring money into data centers will pay off quickly enough to justify lofty valuations.
Nvidia has inked a multiyear agreement with Meta to supply “millions” of its AI chips—covering both existing Blackwell systems and the upcoming Rubin lineup. The deal also includes Grace and Vera CPUs, according to the company. “It … makes it an excellent data center-only CPU,” Nvidia general manager Ian Buck said, referring to the server processors. Reuters
These chips do the grunt work for generative AI. GPUs—graphics processing units—take charge of training models. CPUs, or central processing units, pick up much of the rest in the data center, from shuttling data around to managing database operations.
Nvidia’s efforts to expand past its core GPU business are clear. The company is now touting CPUs, aiming to grab a bigger share of server spending—and stay in the mix with clients as AI workloads increasingly tilt toward “inference,” the term for day-to-day AI operations.
Meta has been working on its own AI chips and has talked with Google about trying out Google’s in-house TPUs. That points to a broader reality: some of Nvidia’s largest customers are also exploring other options.
Fresh quarterly holdings are out and investors are combing through the details, looking for any shifts tied to the AI trade. One filing revealed hedge fund Adage Capital cutting back its positions in some of the major AI names. And over at SoftBank, they’ve exited their Nvidia holding entirely, according to a separate SEC disclosure.
Nvidia faces a familiar dilemma: splashy deal headlines grab attention, but they don’t settle the nagging question—will Big Tech ease up on spending, pivot more to in-house chips, or start pushing harder on suppliers as rivalry intensifies in the server and accelerator market?
Nvidia’s quarterly numbers drop Feb. 25, and traders are zeroed in on supply, pricing, and just how fast Blackwell can scale. Eyes will also be on any signals from management about demand trends heading into the next quarter.
