TLDR
- Nvidia stock rose 2.4% to $201.20 in premarket trading Wednesday, but lagged peers like AMD, which surged over 15% after earnings.
- The AI chip market is moving from GPU-heavy training to inference, where CPUs play a bigger role.
- AMD expects the server CPU market to grow 35%+ annually, hitting $120 billion by 2030.
- Nvidia only recently started selling stand-alone CPUs, and it remains a small part of the business.
- Nvidia’s near-$5 trillion market cap means the stock is widely held and less reactive to news.
Nvidia (NVDA) is up with the rest of the chip sector on Wednesday, but it’s clearly not leading the pack. While AMD jumped more than 15% on the back of a strong earnings beat, Nvidia managed a 2.4% premarket gain to $201.20 — enough to clear the $200 mark, but not exactly a victory lap.
The gap between Nvidia and its peers has been widening. Over the past month, Nvidia is up around 8%. AMD has gained 61% in that same stretch. Broadcom is up 36%. Year-to-date, Nvidia has gained just 4%, slightly trailing the broader market.
So what’s going on?
The short answer is that the AI chip market is changing. Nvidia’s GPUs were the engine of the AI training boom — ideal for the heavy compute needed to build large language models. That’s where Nvidia made its name and its fortune.
But the market is now moving toward inference — running those models in real time to power AI agents and applications. And for inference, CPUs matter a lot more.
AMD’s Earnings Put the CPU Opportunity in Focus
AMD reported first-quarter earnings Tuesday afternoon and beat on both lines. The company earned $1.37 per share versus estimates of $1.29, and brought in $10.2 billion in revenue against a $9.9 billion forecast. CEO Lisa Su pointed to “accelerating demand for AI infrastructure” and said data center is now the primary driver of growth.
AMD executives also raised their outlook for the server CPU market, now expecting it to grow more than 35% annually and reach over $120 billion by 2030 — nearly double the $60 billion forecast from just last November.
That’s a market Nvidia has limited exposure to. The company began selling stand-alone CPUs at the start of 2026, but it’s still a small piece of a business that has long been built around GPUs.
Valuation Tells an Interesting Story
Here’s something worth noting: after a 1,226% gain over five years, Nvidia trades at around 40x trailing earnings. AMD, by comparison, was trading at over 136x trailing earnings before its latest report. Broadcom sits at about 83x.
On valuation alone, Nvidia looks cheaper than both of its main rivals right now.
But cheaper doesn’t always mean it moves faster. Nvidia’s market cap is approaching $5 trillion, which means the stock is already widely held by institutions. There’s less room for the kind of explosive short-covering or momentum buying that sent AMD up 45% since mid-April.
Institutional investors appear to be rotating into AMD and Broadcom rather than adding more Nvidia exposure. That trend has been visible in the charts — Nvidia hit an all-time closing high of $216 on April 27 and has since pulled back.
Nvidia is scheduled to report earnings after the close on May 20. That will be the next major test of whether the GPU giant can reclaim its spot at the top of the chip trade.
🚨 Our MAY Stock Picks Are Live!
A new month means new opportunities. Our analysts have just released their top stock picks for AMay, highlighting companies with strong momentum that rank highly on our KO Score algorithm. We’re also now sharing trade ideas for both long-term and short-term investors, giving you more ways to spot potential opportunities in the market.
Sign up to Knockout Stocks today and get 50% off to unlock the full list and see which stocks made the cut.
Use coupon code Special50 for your exclusive discount!
Get 3 Free Stock Ebooks
Discover top-performing stocks in AI, Crypto, and Technology with expert analysis.
- Top 10 AI Stocks - Leading AI companies
- Top 10 Crypto Stocks - Blockchain leaders
- Top 10 Tech Stocks - Tech giants
