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I have never been one to have a cluttered desk at work.
To me, everything has a place. Awesome desk organization, awesome outcomes, is how my head works.
But I broke this rule slightly by the close of trading on Friday. Going forward, I will have a paper cutout of Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang in his trademark leather jacket thumbtacked to the wallboard (see pic below). And I’ll tell you why.
For one full day this week I forgot to check Nvidia’s stock price my usual 10 times a day — only checking in five times. I let myself (and you all) down because, in the blink of an eye, Nvidia’s stock went from a quick sell-off from the Monday record highs back to those same highs come the end of the week.
I missed it!
The stock is up 13% in October, dusting the 1.4% gain for the S&P 500. AMD’s (AMD) stock is down by 5% this month, similar to Intel (INTC).
So Jensen’s face on my desk is a reminder to check in with Nvidia’s stock price and fundamentals numerous times a day. And to ask everyone I encounter about Nvidia, even people not in the chip space (as I did at one annual CEO dinner this week hosted by ServiceNow’s (NOW) CEO Bill McDermott).
Here’s what I was reminded of by recommitting to an Nvidia obsession: Something insanely bad from a company-specific perspective will be the only thing taking this market darling down for any prolonged period of time. To be honest with you, I don’t see where that insanely bad stuff would sprout from over the next few quarters.
Neither do the array of plugged-in characters I chat up each week.
“I don’t think when you get to Nvidia, there is any hype at all. I have known Jensen for decades, and he is the real deal. What these guys are doing is very real and very powerful,” C3.ai (AI) founder and CEO Tom Siebel told me on Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid podcast (video above; listen in below).
Hey Sam Altman, you should watch what Siebel thinks about your latest valuation…
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Anyhow, Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) CEO Antonio Neri has known Jensen for ages. I didn’t get the sense Nvidia’s products were anything but super hot sellers in a chat with him, yours truly, and Seana Smith on Yahoo Finance’s Catalysts.
“When you think about the large-scale [cloud] providers, what they want is to come to market with the latest technologies. And obviously, Blackwell is a key component of that as they go from air-cooled to the liquid cooling, more power density and more performance, and they are on track to do that,” Neri said about Nvidia.
Speaking of Blackwell — Nvidia’s new ultra-high-powered AI chip — the analyst community feels as if they are readying to jack up their fourth quarter profit forecasts on better-than-expected demand.
“We believe demand is outstripping supply for Nvidia 15:1, and the Street is realizing this AI party is still at 9 pm and being led by the Godfather of AI Jensen and Nvidia. TSMC had monster [earnings] numbers, and Blackwell looks like an Aaron Judge debut coming out of the gates,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told me.
The JPMorgan team estimates “several billion dollars” in Blackwell revenue in Nvidia’s fourth quarter. Huge if it happens, underscoring the appetite to build out AI infrastructure.
Believe me, I look at Nvidia very critically, just like all the companies I report on.
But geez, it sure looks as if Nvidia being back in beast mode makes a lot of sense — as does having a cutout of Jensen at my desk.
“Jensen is an innovator, great leader, great operator. You can’t count those guys out of anything,” Siebel added.
Three times each week, I field insight-filled conversations with the biggest names in business and markets on Opening Bid. Find more episodes on our video hub. Watch on your preferred streaming service. Or listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts.
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi and on LinkedIn. Tips on deals, mergers, activist situations, or anything else? Email [email protected].
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