New York, March 2, 2026, 06:25 EST — Premarket
- Nvidia shares slipped roughly 1.5% in premarket action, caught up in the broader risk-off mood.
- Nvidia’s closer relationship with OpenAI and a report flagging a new inference chip are front of mind for investors heading into GTC.
- Tech heads into the week with oil prices surging and fresh rate jitters in play.
Nvidia slipped 1.5% to around $174.56 in early U.S. trading Monday, down from Friday’s close at $177.19.
The decline comes as traders weigh heightened geopolitical tensions that are driving a flight to safety, against a flurry of AI-related deal and product news, a sector where Nvidia still holds sway.
U.S. stock index futures slid over 1% after crude prices surged roughly 8% following a flare-up in the Middle East over the weekend—an uncomfortable pairing for growth stocks, with inflation worries rising and traders pulling back on hopes for imminent Fed rate cuts. Societe Generale analysts cautioned the fallout could “more durable” should the conflict persist. Reuters
Nvidia finds itself in the thick of the AI funding frenzy again. OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced Friday a $110 billion raise, pushing its valuation to $840 billion. Nvidia is chipping in $30 billion, Amazon is set to invest $50 billion, and SoftBank has committed $30 billion.
Scale is the point here: it reflects just how much the top AI players plan to shell out for computing power—and which partners they want in the mix when the invoices hit. According to Amazon, OpenAI has agreed to tap 2 gigawatts’ worth of computing muscle running on Amazon’s Trainium chips. Microsoft, meanwhile, continues its existing OpenAI partnership.
Nvidia could see a product spark heading into mid-March. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company is prepping a processor platform tailored for “inference”—that’s when an AI model spits out responses—and it may make its debut during Nvidia’s GTC developer event in San Jose. Reuters
The report noted the system will use a chip built by Groq, a startup. OpenAI, as Reuters has reported, hasn’t been satisfied with the speed of some Nvidia hardware on specific tasks and has explored other options.
Nvidia is fresh off a run of late-February results that shattered its own records: quarterly revenue came in strong, and the company now expects first-quarter revenue to hit around $78 billion. The outlook, though, doesn’t count on any data center compute revenue from China. “Computing demand is growing exponentially,” CEO Jensen Huang said in the release. NVIDIA Newsroom
That puts traders in a tight spot. If oil stays high on geopolitical jitters and yields don’t ease off, expensive chip names could tumble quickly. On the AI front, the story’s the same — watch for hyperscalers or key clients ramping up their own custom silicon, or if inference jobs drift away from Nvidia hardware. Either move would heat up questions about just how long Nvidia’s grip on pricing really lasts.
The next Nvidia milestone isn’t far off. GTC is set for March 16–19, with CEO Huang taking the stage for his keynote March 16, a slot Nvidia routinely reserves for big hardware roadmap reveals.
