Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang Unveils New Innovations At CES 2025

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang presenting in Las Vegas on January 6, 2025 (Artur Widak/Getty Images)

Nvidia jumps on report of new AI chip tailor-made for Chinese market

Nvidia is taking a big inventory write-down on its prior attempt for a Chinese-specific AI chip in this week’s earnings report.

Luke Kawa

5/27/25 7:30AM

On Monday, Reuters reported that Nvidia is planning on retooling its new Blackwell chip to make a cheaper, though less powerful, version of the chips for sale to China.

Shares are up 2.5% in early trading on this impending addition to the already long list of Nvidia’s AI hardware.

This strong start to the day might help end an inauspicious span for the industry, with the VanEck Semiconductor ETF falling for seven straight sessions, its longest losing streak since September 2022. The fund is off 4.3% over this stretch, versus a 3% decline for Nvidia — a stock that recently suffered its largest exodus by retail investors in a decade.

Earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang emphasized the opportunity available in China’s AI market, saying it would likely reach about $50 billion in the next two to three years. He followed that up with comments last week saying export curbs on China have been “a failure,” hurting US businesses more than China.

While the US and China have taken high tariffs off the boil, semiconductors remain contentious territory. That was underscored by last week’s “demands” by China’s Ministry of Commerce that the US “correct its mistakes” pertaining to discouraging the use of Huawei’s AI chips.

The Trump administration recently scrapped measures from the Biden administration that restricted semi sales abroad. But these changes do more to help countries like Saudi Arabia get access to this advanced technology — hence the billions in deals with big AI players a couple of weeks ago — and effectively maintain the status quo for China.

According to Reuters, which reports that the new chips are slated for mass production as early as June, an Nvidia spokesperson said, “Until we settle on a new product design and receive approval from the US government, we are effectively foreclosed from China’s $50 billion data center market.”

Nvidia has warned of a $5.5 billion write-down to the value of its inventory coming in Wednesday’s earnings report after the US government crimped its ability to sell H20 chips to China.

Seagate beats expectations on sales and EPS

The guidance was strong, too.

Matt Phillips3h

Tasha Matsumoto

S&P 500 climbs to new all-time high ahead of Big Tech earnings

Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla will report after the bell tomorrow.

Matt Phillips4h

Satellite stocks surge on “sovereign space” plans

Planet Labs is on pace to notch its second 10% gain of the month early Tuesday afternoon, adding to its astronomical run of more than 500% over the last 12 months.

Wedbush Securities tech analyst Dan Ives hiked his price target for the stock to $30 from $28 after hosting a series of meetings with the company and investors in California. Ives wrote:

“[Planet Labs] is seeing massive success through its improved GTM selling motion as the company is providing mission-critical use cases for a wide array of government applications with defense & intelligence, with more international agencies seeing the value in PL’s satellite fleet for situational and maritime domain awareness in real-time as the company is benefitting from increasing defense budgets and the urgent need for international countries to reduce its reliance on the US.”

That commentary is consistent with recent news reports that the German military is planning to build what the Financial Times calls the “the equivalent of Elon Musk’s internet service for the German armed forces.”

A separate report in The Wall Street Journal on Monday said, “Spending on space-related projects is expected to rise in many countries, giving companies new opportunities to sell their wares and services.”

Behind this push, in part, is the fact that the roughly 80-year-old NATO alliance is is under unprecedented strain due to, among other things, US President Donald Trump’s fixation on somehow acquiring the Danish territory of Greenland.

Other space plays seem to be benefiting from similar dynamics, with Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both up solidly on the day.

Governments’ New Must-Have: Their Own Satellites

“[Planet Labs] is seeing massive success through its improved GTM selling motion as the company is providing mission-critical use cases for a wide array of government applications with defense & intelligence, with more international agencies seeing the value in PL’s satellite fleet for situational and maritime domain awareness in real-time as the company is benefitting from increasing defense budgets and the urgent need for international countries to reduce its reliance on the US.”

Other space plays seem to be benefiting from similar dynamics, with Rocket Lab and AST SpaceMobile both up solidly on the day.

Matt Phillips7h

Corning-Meta deal reignites optical connections trade

Corning’s $6 billion deal with Meta to provide fiber-optic cable connections for its AI data centers is reigniting an AI-related trade that’s been stalled out over the last month.

Fellow opto-electrical makers of plugs, cables, and various doodads needed to connect data center servers — such as Amphenol, Coherent, and Lumentum — are also soaring Tuesday.

Such stocks ripped in the second half of 2025 before the rally sputtered out in the first half of December. But the amount of money Meta plans to shower on Corning has clearly cheered up competitors — and investors — in the space today.

Corning soars after striking deal to sell up to $6 billion in optical infrastructure to Meta

Luke Kawa10h

Richtech Robotics soars after announcing partnership with Microsoft to use AI to improve its robots

Shares Richtech Robotics are surging in premarket trading after the company announced “a hands-on collaboration with Microsoft through the Microsoft AI Co-Innovation Labs to jointly develop and deploy agentic artificial intelligence capabilities in real-world robotic systems.”

Per the press release, the two companies worked together to imbue Richtech’s flagship ADAM robot with “additional layers of context awareness” to “support smoother workflows and more responsive customer interactions in retail environments.”

Apropos of nothing, here’s an ADAM robot serving Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang a margarita:

Richtech was one of many robotics and vaguely robotics companies that caught a massive bid in early December after Politico reported that the Commerce Department was poised to go “all in” to support the industry. To date, there's been no evidence of such a plan, but that hasn’t stopped robotics stocks from having a phenomenal start to 2026. The Themes Humanoid Robotics ETF, which counts Richtech as one of its members, gained nearly 50% year-to-date through Thursday’s close, though it has since come off the boil.