By Adam Clark
Nvidia was rising early Wednesday amid a broader chip-stocks rally. However its relatively small exposure to central-processing units and larger market value means its gains were smaller than those of some peers.
The shares were up 2.4% to $201.20 in premarket trading. While the move pushes it above the psychologically significantly $200 level, it was only a small boost compared with Advanced Micro Devices' 20% gain on the back of AMD's strong earnings Tuesday afternoon.
Nvidia is up 7.9% over the past month, compared with more than 40% gains for many of its rivals and the explanation lies in shifting hardware choices.
The company's graphics-processing units (GPUs) dominated the early stages of the AI revolution, as they proved ideal for training the models behind chatbots such as ChatGPT. However, the AI chip market is now shifting its focus from training to inference -- the process of running models. As has long been predicted, the growth of AI agents, or programs that can act autonomously, has led to an explosive increase in demand for inference computing.
Central processing units are key for inference. AMD executives said they expect the server CPU market to grow by more than 35% annually, reaching more than $120 billion by 2030, up from a forecast of $60 billion as recently as November.
Nvidia began selling stand-alone CPUs at the start of the year, however it is a much smaller part of its business. The company's huge market capitalization of nearly $5 trillion also means it's stock is already widely held and is less reactive to news.
Until Nvidia can show significant CPU momentum, it might have to get used to the unaccustomed position of trailing the moves of its chip peers.
Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@barrons.com
This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 06, 2026 08:59 ET (12:59 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.