Nvidia's GTC conference could be a 'wake-up moment' for investors as the AI trade falters
Nvidia (NVDA) stock slid about 3% Tuesday morning ahead of the AI chipmaker’s annual GTC conference in California on Tuesday.
CEO Jensen Huang was expected to kick off a keynote previewing what’s ahead for the company. His commentary will likely be closely watched by investors evaluating whether the AI trade still has room to run.
Nvidia stock has experienced significant volatility in 2025. Shares started the year with a bang, hitting a record close above $149 in early January. They tumbled when a new AI model from Chinese firm DeepSeek reignited concerns over an AI bubble and shaved nearly $600 billion from the chipmaker’s market cap in a single day. In its most recent rout following its fourth quarter earnings and heightened macroeconomic uncertainty, Nvidia saw its market cap losses from its record close reach $1 trillion.
But Nvidia bull and Wedbush analyst Dan Ives wrote in a note to investors Tuesday that he believes the company’s GTC conference in San Jose this week will be “a wake-up moment for the tech bulls.”
Huang is expected to debut the company’s upcoming Blackwell Ultra GPU [graphics processing unit, or AI chip], a successor to its current-generation Blackwell AI chip, which the company said achieved full-scale production in the most recent quarter. Huang is also expected to preview Nvidia’s Vera Rubin superchip, the next-gen version of its latest Grace Blackwell superchips.
Overall, tech stocks have led the stock market’s recent downturn. The Nasdaq (^IXIC)entered correction territory March 6, and the S&P 500 (^GSPC) followed suit a week later, as Trump’s tariffs and DOGE-driven cuts to federal jobs fueled concerns over inflation.
“We clearly need stable Trump policy and investors need to know the rules of the game..but that will all happen over the coming months and we do not believe this dramatically changes the trajectory of the AI Revolution,” wrote Ives, later adding, “We believe this week's Nvidia GTC Conference will be a turning point for tech stocks as the Street starts to refocus on the AI Revolution and the massive tech spending ahead for the coming years.”
Ives wrote that he expects Huang to highlight Nvidia’s “lingering worries about DeepSeek, and also focus on the physical AI future with autonomous and robotics,” among other topics.
Truist analyst Will Stein also stayed bullish on Nvidia ahead of GTC, reiterating his Buy rating and $205 price target on the stock in a note to investors Tuesday.
Stein acknowledged bearish arguments against the AI trade: “The biggest investor concern (that was magnified by DeepSeek (private)) is that NVDA's customers are deploying too much AI compute capacity today, and that customers will subsequently enter a period of digestion, causing a cyclical downturn. To us, this dynamic is a certainty; the only question is on timing.”
