Nvidia stock touched a new record Tuesday following a high-profile speech from its billionaire leader Jensen Huang, an address teasing the next big thing in artificial intelligence which also inspired rallies from the stocks of several other companies in Nvidia’s orbit.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang delivers a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show on Monday.
AFP via Getty Images
Key Facts
Nvidia stock rallied as much as 2.5% to a new intraday all-time high of $153 shortly after market open, coming on the heels of Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s Monday evening keynote at the CES 2025 conference, before turning negative by 10 a.m. as part of a broader technology stock pullback.
In addition to advancements in its graphics processing units used for gaming, the speech largely focused on Nvidia’s efforts in robotics, or physical AI.
Nvidia showed Monday it “continues to enhance and develop both AI hardware and software offerings that will help maintain its AI leadership as the market transitions to physical AI,” remarked Rosenblatt analyst Hans Mosesmann in a note to clients.
Huang’s speech also unveiled a variety of new or enhanced partnerships with other major companies for Nvidia, including naming data storage firm Micron as Nvidia’s memory partner for its gaming GPUs and a trio of deals in the space of autonomous driving, perhaps the clearest application of physical AI.
Huang said Nvidia will supply the semiconductor chips for Toyota’s driver assistance programs and announced it will provide the technology powering the self-driving trucks of Colorado-based Aurora, while ride-hailer Uber said it will use Nvidia’s Cosmos physical AI platform to power its own autonomous driving initiative.
Shares of Aurora gained more than 40% to their highest level since early 2022, while the stocks of the more established Micron (up 5%), Toyota (2%) and Uber (2%) also enjoyed notable gains.
Crucial Quote
“The ChatGPT moment for general robotics is just around the corner,” Huang declared Monday, referring to the 2022 release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot which sparked intense public interest in generative AI.
Tangent
With a market capitalization of $3.7 trillion, Nvidia is within 1% of overtaking Apple as the world’s most valuable company. Nvidia has not ended the day as the planet’s biggest company since Nov. 25.
Key Background
Nvidia is the unquestioned leader in designing the hardware and software architecture needed to power advanced AI, and its non-automaker customers include the likes of Amazon and Microsoft. Long known for its video game graphic efforts, Nvidia rose to the national stage as generative AI captured the attention of the public and Wall Street alike. Nvidia stock is up more than 2,000% over the last five years.
