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Wall Street is lukewarm on AI updates

Nvidia isn’t acting like a company whose stock has dropped 17% over the last month. 

The AI giant kicked off its annual GTC conference in San Jose, California on Tuesday, and CEO Jensen Huang spoke for two hours on stage before a raucous crowd of roughly 25,000 tech enthusiasts, analysts and mega-fans.

Among the announcements: 

“Artificial intelligence has made extraordinary progress,” Huang said, adding that customer demand for Blackwell chips is “incredible.” 

Neither the product updates nor the enthusiasm from the conference impressed Wall Street, however.

Shares of Nvidia dropped 3.43% Tuesday. Over the last six months, its performance remains effectively flat, similar to its peers in the Magnificent Seven.  

“With expectations already high, the lack of near-term surprises kept investor sentiment muted, even as its advancements in GPUs, integration with CPO and presence in automotive and telecom continue to widen its moat and expand its customer base beyond cloud providers,” said Kunjan Sobhani, a senior industry analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.  

In any case, seemingly undeterred by stock prices, Huang revealed on stage a new partnership with Disney Research and Google’s Deepmind, interacting with a small robot in front of the crowd. 

Broadly, the executive said robotics will help solve the world’s shortage of human workers.

“Physical AI and robotics are moving at such a high pace,” Huang said. “Everyone should pay attention.”

Jacklyn Dallas, who founded the media company NothingButTech, attended the conference Tuesday. She told me the excitement in the crowd was palpable, and that the audience responded positively to Huang’s presentation.

The recent weakness in Nvidia's stock price, in Dallas' view, doesn't seem representative of the company's pace of innovation and vision for what comes next.

"It feels undeniable that the demand for [Nvidia technology] is going to keep going up," she said, noting that Nvidia is positioned to lead the charge with critical AI agents and robotics.

"I'm pretty confident Nvidia will keep crushing it because there's not great competition for what they are doing, and Nvidia has proven to be best-in-class at everything they do."

Market snapshot:

Elsewhere:

🏦 The Federal Reserve isn’t expected to change interest rates today. The FOMC day could see Jerome Powell alluding to a softer economic outlook and volatile markets. Our team will publish a recap in Thursday’s newsletter.

📨 Looking for unbiased news coverage? That's the hallmark of The Flyover, a newsletter we trust that hits 1.1 million inboxes a day and counting — sign up free here.

🇷🇺 Russia’s Putin agrees to pause attacks in Ukraine. In a call with President Trump, the leader agreed to continue working on details of a longer peace plan. The first step in the process was halting further damage to Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. (WSJ)

📉 Individual investors aren’t buying the dip. Retail outflows from US stocks climbed to roughly $4 billion over the last two weeks. During the recent sell-off, retirement account owners have been trading their investments at four times the average level. (CNBC)

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📰 I’m Phil Rosen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of Opening Bell Daily. I’ve published books, lived on three continents, and won awards for my journalism, which has appeared in Business Insider, Fortune, Yahoo Finance, Bloomberg and Inc. Magazine.

I write our flagship newsletter to prepare you for each trading day, unpacking markets, economic data and Wall Street with analysis you won’t find anywhere else. Feedback? Reply directly to this email, ping me on X @philrosenn, or write me phil@openingbellmedia.com.