Nvidia is set to announce quarterly results that could offer clues about the health of the generative AI revolution.

As the company that’s cornered the market on the processors needed to run large generative models, Nvidia’s earnings serve as a signpost for where the AI hype train is headed. That’s especially true this week, after investors spent the past few months wringing their hands over a potentially popping AI bubble.

A team of analysts at Wedbush Securities wrote in a research note that Nvidia earnings would make for “the most important week for the stock market this year and potentially in years.”

Here’s what to look for after market close on Wednesday:

• The company has a high bar to clear: Analysts expect its revenue to more than double YoY to $28.2 billion, according to the Zacks Investment Research consensus.
• Investors will pay attention to updates about reported production delays around Nvidia’s new Blackwell chip. Nvidia told Reuters this month that it’s on track to ramp up production later this year, but a delay could have consequences for Microsoft, Meta, and other AI giants. At least one analyst thinks demand for the previous Hopper architecture could fill the gap, however, according to Reuters.
• Evercore ISI strategists said in a note that guidance for next quarter will be key to reassuring Wall Street, “as investors remain skittish on AI adoption,” Investing.com reported.

Recent earnings beats from Microsoft, Google, and other companies that have invested heavily in AI bode well for Nvidia, but expect any signs of trouble to reverberate—not only for Nvidia’s share price, but potentially for the Big Tech companies that rely on it.—PK

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Getting a new vehicle from the design phase to mass production typically takes years.

But in an increasingly fast-paced and competitive global market, automakers are doing everything they can to get new models onto the road quicker–including leaning into nontraditional manufacturing methods.

Take, for example, the all-electric Explorer SUV Ford currently produces for the European market at its Cologne, Germany, plant. The automaker used 3D printing to shave time and costs off of the traditional development process. Ford and 3D-printing company Formlabs earlier this month provided a behind-the-scenes look at how, exactly, they leveraged additive manufacturing to bring the electric Explorer to market faster.

“Every second counts in the development process, and reducing the time to prototype lowered the overall costs of finalizing the design,” Michael Baker, global head of brand and communications at Formlabs, told Tech Brew via email.

Using Formlabs’s 3D-printing equipment, Ford employees at the automaker’s development center in Cologne printed injection molds for rubber components for the vehicle’s door handles. This helped reduce a potentially months-long process to three weeks, according to Baker.

Hurry up: Speed is a key consideration for legacy automakers as they go head-to-head with highly competitive Chinese EV makers that hold a dominant force in the global EV market.

Keep reading here.—JG

Humans will soon take their first steps in space without any prompting from the government.

The SpaceX-operated Polaris Dawn mission will carry a four-person crew of civilian astronauts on a daring cosmic adventure: the first spacewalk undertaken by people not employed by a national space agency. It’s expected to launch later this week at the earliest after a helium leak stymied plans to blast off this morning.

Billionaire entrepreneur and enthusiast pilot Jared Isaacman will lead the five-day space voyage aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which will serve as a landmark test flight for private scientific space exploration.

Cosmic itinerary

Isaacman will be accompanied by his longtime friend and colleague, Air Force pilot Scott “Kidd” Poteet, as well as SpaceX engineers Anna Menon and Sarah Gillis.

• The quartet will first soar past an extreme radiation zone as far as 870 miles above Earth, an altitude not visited by humans since NASA’s last lunar expedition in 1972.
• They will then descend to 435 miles above Earth, where Isaacman and Gillis will step out of the spacecraft while rocking SpaceX’s sleek new spacesuits for a quick but risky spacewalk that will require the entire vehicle to depressurize.

The astronauts will collect data on the health effects of space and test Starlink laser-based communications.

It’s just the dawn: Two additional Polaris missions are planned: a controversial project to move NASA’s Hubble Telescope and a first-ever crewed flight of SpaceX’s jumbo Starship spacecraft, designed for lunar and martian travel.—SK