New York, Feb 27, 2026, 06:44 ET — Premarket
- Nvidia shares were indicated slightly higher before the bell after a 5.5% slide on Thursday
- The chipmaker forecast $78 billion in quarterly revenue, but investors focused on AI spending payback and competition
- Traders are watching U.S. producer prices at 8:30 a.m. ET and Nvidia’s March GTC event for the next catalyst
Nvidia shares rose about 0.4% in premarket trading on Friday after falling 5.5% in the previous session, a sharp reversal that dragged on other chip stocks. The stock was last around $184.89, giving the company a market value of roughly $4.5 trillion. 1
The move matters because Nvidia has become one of Wall Street’s main tests of whether Big Tech’s AI spending spree is still accelerating — and whether today’s prices already assume it. After the results, Ken Mahoney, CEO at Mahoney Asset Management, called it “a good beat and raise” but said “a lot was baked in to the cake.” 2
Investors also used the report to revisit a nagging question: how much cash Nvidia will return versus keep plowing into the broader AI buildout. “Nvidia once again exceeded expectations but the competitive picture is shifting,” said Jacob Bourne, an analyst at eMarketer, pointing to customers diversifying toward rival chips and more in-house silicon. 3
Nvidia said fourth-quarter revenue climbed 73% from a year earlier to $68.1 billion, with data center revenue of $62.3 billion. It forecast first-quarter revenue of about $78.0 billion, plus or minus 2%, and said it was not assuming any data center compute revenue from China in that outlook. “Computing demand is growing exponentially,” CEO Jensen Huang said in the release, as the company talked up newer platforms including Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin. 4
The whipsaw started quickly: Nvidia shares jumped about 4% in after-hours trade after the results, then sank 5.5% on Thursday. The Nasdaq fell about 1.3% and the Philadelphia semiconductor index dropped about 3% as the stock’s slide wiped roughly $260 billion off Nvidia’s market value. 5
Some traders argue the selloff has left Nvidia looking less stretched on basic valuation measures. Bloomberg noted the stock was priced at about 22 times forward earnings — a multiple based on expected profit — below its five-year average. 6
Still, the broader tape has turned jumpy around anything tied to AI, from chipmakers to the companies that buy the hardware. “It seems the Street simply wanted more,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note, as investors balked at chasing the stock after another strong quarter. 7
The next week is stacked with cross-currents beyond Nvidia’s own story. The monthly U.S. jobs report is due on Friday, March 6, and Broadcom is among the remaining big semiconductor names still to report results as the earnings season fades, Reuters reported. “There is very little definitive right now,” Kristina Hooper, chief market strategist at Man Group, said of the market’s search for who benefits — and who gets hurt — as AI spreads through the economy. 8
But Nvidia’s stock has little patience left built in. Any sign that hyperscalers — the big cloud firms — are slowing data center spending, or shifting more workloads onto their own chips, could hit expectations quickly, especially after a multi-year run that left the company central to index performance.
In the near term, traders will parse the U.S. Producer Price Index at 8:30 a.m. ET for clues on inflation and rates, and look for fresh demand and product signals at Nvidia’s GTC conference in San Jose on March 16–19. 9
