NEW YORK, February 19, 2026, 06:37 ET — Premarket
- Nvidia slipped in early premarket action, giving back some ground after riding a Meta-fueled surge the previous session.
- New filings revealed that several major investors pared back certain AI-focused positions toward the end of last year.
- Walmart earnings and U.S. inflation readings are also in focus for Wall Street, with investors eyeing both for potential rate clues.
Nvidia (NVDA.O) slipped 0.4% to $187.25 in early premarket action Thursday, retracing a little after Wednesday’s push higher. (Public)
The chip designer now sits at the heart of the “AI trade” — that big market bet on relentless growth in artificial intelligence data center spending. Valuations have soared. Results are on deck next week; traders are scanning for any details that might shed light on Nvidia’s latest chip demand and pricing.
Nvidia picked up 1.6% last session after announcing a multi-year agreement to supply Meta Platforms with millions of its AI chips—both current models and those still to come. That news gave a boost to Wall Street’s tech-leaning indexes. “Weakness in tech was bound to bring in the marginal buyer,” Baird investment strategy analyst Ross Mayfield said. (Reuters)
U.S. stock index futures slipped as investors waited for Walmart’s earnings; Nvidia and other megacap growth names lost ground early, giving back some of Wednesday’s gains. Fed minutes out this week pointed to a consensus among policymakers to keep rates unchanged, with Bernard Yaros at Oxford Economics noting “the bias” is for staying put. Weekly jobless claims land later Thursday, while the Fed’s favored inflation metric — the PCE report — comes Friday. (Reuters)
Nvidia hasn’t put a number on the Meta agreement, but the deal spans its Blackwell AI chips, upcoming Rubin processors, and the Grace and Vera CPUs. Ian Buck, who heads Nvidia’s hyperscale and high-performance computing business, described early Vera results as “very promising.” Meta, for its part, is building its own AI chips and has weighed Google’s TPU line as well. (Reuters)
The customer win comes as investors pick through the latest batch of quarterly 13F filings—SEC-required snapshots of what big funds were holding at quarter’s end. Tiger Global and Adage Capital both cut back on Nvidia in Q4, and SoftBank Group exited its Nvidia position in an October deal that freed up cash for more OpenAI bets. Nvidia shares have slipped roughly 7% since SoftBank’s Nov. 11 sale disclosure. Wall Street is bracing for Nvidia to deliver a 67% revenue surge when it reports Feb. 25, LSEG data shows. (Reuters)
Nvidia’s overseas appetite for big AI deals isn’t slowing. India’s Yotta Data Services is on track to spend over $2 billion snapping up Nvidia’s latest chips for an AI hub, planning to roll out more than 20,000 Blackwell Ultra units by August. CEO Sunil Gupta says Yotta hopes to pull in as much as $1.2 billion in fundraising before a possible IPO. (Reuters)
But demand isn’t the only factor shaping the near-term outlook. Major cloud players have stepped up efforts on their own silicon, and Nvidia’s expansion into CPUs now places it alongside Intel and AMD on the infrastructure stack—not just in the GPU arena.
High expectations set a tight bar. Even small signs of weaker orders, stricter export policies, or AI investments taking longer to pay off can hit guidance — and when that happens, the stock doesn’t hesitate to react.
Feb. 25 marks the next major test: Nvidia will release its fourth-quarter and fiscal 2026 numbers, drop a CFO commentary online around 1:20 p.m. PT, then jump on a conference call at 2 p.m. PT (5 p.m. ET). (Nvidia)
