Nvidia stock closed at a new all-time high of $219.44 on May 11, gaining 2% on the day and capping a four-day winning streak that added roughly $550 billion in market capitalization. The surge, which marked the third record close of 2026, came despite CEO Jensen Huang being conspicuously absent from President Trump’s delegation to China earlier that week.
While executives from Apple, Tesla, BlackRock, and Boeing joined the Beijing trip, Huang was left off the list. The White House stated the visit focused on agriculture and aviation, not semiconductors. Nevertheless, the market shrugged off the perceived snub — Huang himself had said on May 8 that participation “would be a great honor,” but Nvidia’s China exposure in advanced AI chips has already been reduced to effectively zero. The company’s latest annual report confirms it was “effectively foreclosed” from China’s data center market, a loss that helped rivals like Huawei build out competing ecosystems.
Huawei expects its AI chip revenue to jump at least 60% this year to about $12 billion, with the new Ascend 950PR entering mass production. Large Chinese tech firms are scrambling for Huawei chips, underscoring a structural shift: Nvidia is unlikely to reclaim meaningful China share in 2026.
Wall Street remains focused on Nvidia’s core business. The stock is up 15% year-to-date, trailing Intel and AMD which have both roughly doubled, partly due to a rotation toward CPUs for AI inference workloads. The next catalyst is the May 20 fiscal Q1 2027 earnings report, where consensus expects revenue of $78.6 billion — up 78% year-over-year. Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes set a Street-high target of $380, calling Nvidia cheap at a ~50% discount to AMD. Of 70 analysts tracked by FactSet, 65 rate the stock a Buy, with an average target near $274, implying 24% upside.
