Hey Snackers,
We thought that the uptick in social videos from people we actually know taken with Meta’s Ray-Ban Display glasses was due to a post-holiday-gift bump, but according to Meta, there’s “unprecedented demand” for the smart eyewear, with waitlists that extend “well into 2026.” There’s such a backlog that the company is delaying international expansion entirely, but even for those in the US, there are a lot of hurdles to clear before you can see yourself in a pair.
The three major US indexes all climbed higher on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 setting a new record high. In a reversal of yesterday’s gains, energy was the worst-performing sector. Investors piled into semiconductors as developments from the CES conference in Las Vegas buoyed enthusiasm for the AI trade.
Nvidia speaks, the stock market listens
On any typical day in the market where something in the grand ecosystem of the tech sector moves, your first question is usually something on the order of, “All right, did Nvidia do anything?”
Well, Monday evening Nvidia’s Jensen Huang gave a nice and revealing talk at CES, and then all of Tuesday the market acted in response. First let’s recap what was said.
Huang announced that its Vera Rubin chips are in full production. This is the new generation of AI GPUs for Nvidia, the successor to its Blackwell line, and the differences between Vera Rubin and Blackwell have industry-defining impacts.
For instance, God help you if you sell things that cool down chips. “The power of Vera Rubin is twice as high as Grace Blackwell,” Huang said, adding that it can be cooled by water at a temperature of 45 degrees Celsius, eliminating the need for water chillers at data centers.
Huang also unveiled Alpamayo, an open “reasoning” AI model family designed specifically for autonomous driving, and then announced that Nvidia is expanding its DRIVE Hyperion autonomous vehicle platform, touted as a ready-to-use foundation for self-driving cars and robotaxis, bringing in a wide range of auto suppliers and sensor makers.
What came next was expected: Nvidia speaks, and the market listens.
Data center water-cooling stocks sank, with Johnson Controls, Carrier, and Trane Technologies all taking a cold shower after Nvidia said the new AI racks won’t need their equipment.
Anyone with actual skin in the game on Vera Rubin made that known and were remunerated by the market accordingly, with Nebius (up 8%) reminding investors it’s deploying Vera Rubin in its cloud in H2 2026 and CoreWeave (up 1.4%) asserting that it expects “to be among the first cloud providers to deploy the NVIDIA Rubin platform.”
And perhaps biggest of all, there was a bonanza in data storage stocks after Huang called the market “completely unserved.” Sandisk finished up 28%, Western Digital up 17%, Micron up 10%, and Seagate Technology Holdings up 14%.
And Wall Street analysts ate it up. “NVDA has deftly positioned itself to benefit from multiple aspects of physical AI development — from data center compute (model training), to simulation (Omniverse) to edge devices (Jetson Thor) — which in aggregate could potentially drive the next leg of revenue growth for NVDA,” wrote JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur.
The Takeaway
Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives perhaps encapsulated the vibe on the Street the best, saying Huang’s address “fully set the tone for the AI Revolution heading into 2026 as the company laid the path for the next stage of the AI Revolution: physical AI.”
In particular, “We walked out of the event feeling even more bullish about Nvidia and the overall AI Revolution as the next stage of investments and technology are on the horizon that can facilitate a new age for the technology world with companies around the world are set to capitalize on $3 trillion to $4 trillion of AI Cap Ex hitting the market over the next 3 years.”
The Best Thing We Read Today
D-Wave Quantum touts tech breakthrough that lets gate models scale
A key challenge in developing superconducting gate-based quantum computers is how to gather a ton of quantum bits (or qubits) in the same place while keeping them all cool enough to function. Here’s how D-Wave Quantum says it’s solved the tricky problem of heat.
Snacks Shots
🏈 NFL: It’s a wild MVP race, with quarterbacks Matthew Stafford of the Los Angeles Rams and Drake Maye of the New England Patriots once again flipping market positioning after Week 18. Stafford is yet again the favorite* after a week at underdog, back up to a 64% chance of winning to Maye’s 36%.
🏛️ Minnesota: Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar is the overnight favorite to be the next governor of Minnesota if she indeed does opt to run following the surprise exit of Gov. Tim Walz from the race, with PredictIt giving her a 65% chance of being the Democratic nominee in a race where the Democrats have an 81% chance of winning.
🎬 Oscars: The Annie Awards, which are voted on by animators, nominated “Zootopia 2,” “KPop Demon Hunters,” “Elio,” “Little Amélie or the Character of Rain,” “Arco,” and “Bad Guys 2” for Best Feature. Right now prediction markets consider “KPop Demon Hunters” and “Zootopia 2” shoo-ins for the nomination, giving “Elio” a 73% chance and “Little Amélie” an 83% chance of an Oscar nomination in Best Animated Feature, but have generally snubbed “Bad Guys 2” in favor of “Arco.”
*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.
What Else We're Snackin'
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Roblox went down overnight Monday, but based on the platform’s dipping user numbers, at least less people noticed?
The AI leaderboard maker LMArena just hit a $1.7 billion valuation
Why bigger homes aren’t making us any happier
Snack Fact Of The Day
XRP spot ETFs have yet to record a single day of outflows since launch.
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