Newsletter · 2026-05-10 · Ashutosh Agarwal

Nvidia Hits Record Highs Ahead of May 20 Earnings as China Export Risks Stay in Focus - NVIDIA (NVDA) Investor Newsletter - Week of May 6–10, 2026

NVIDIA investor newsletter for May 6–10, 2026. NVDA hits all-time highs into May 20 earnings as China export risk and custom-silicon competition top the debate.

NVIDIA (NVDA) Investor Newsletter

Week of May 6–10, 2026: Nvidia Hits Record Highs Ahead of May 20 Earnings as China Export Risks Stay in Focus

🔑 Top Story: NVIDIA at All-Time Highs Ahead of May 20 Earnings

NVIDIA's stock surged to all-time highs this week, breaching a $5.26 trillion market cap (~$216/share as of May 8), making it the most discussed name across financial media. The single most important near-term catalyst: earnings on May 20, 2026. Here's everything you need to know heading into that print.

📰 Breaking News (From Documents)

1. Jensen Huang Invited on Trump's China Trip

The Trump administration is planning to bring executives from major companies including NVIDIA's Jensen Huang on the president's trip to China next week, alongside CEOs from Apple, Exxon, Boeing, Qualcomm, Blackstone, Citigroup, and Visa, with additional CEOs expected to seek invitations in the coming days.(1.1) This is significant for NVIDIA investors given China's importance as an end market and the ongoing chip export control landscape.

2. NVIDIA Chip Smuggling Allegations, Key Regulatory Risk

A firm linked to Thailand's national AI initiative is suspected of helping smuggle billions of dollars' worth of Super Micro Computer servers containing advanced NVIDIA chips to China. Some of the $2.5B worth of servers sold to OBON allegedly went to Alibaba.(1.2) Alibaba denied involvement, with a spokesperson stating: "Alibaba has no business relationship with Super Micro, OBON or any third-party brokers... We do not currently use, and have never used, any banned Nvidia chips at our data centers."(1.3) This story is a reminder that export controls remain a live regulatory risk for NVIDIA's revenue profile.

3. SoftBank-NVIDIA Japan AI Server Partnership

SoftBank is in talks to develop and produce homegrown AI servers in Japan, weighing plans to start designing and assembling components by the end of the decade with the help of major players like NVIDIA and Foxconn.(1.4) This adds to NVIDIA's growing international manufacturing and partnership footprint.

🎙️ Podcast Roundup, Key Episodes This Week

📌 NVIDIA Core Coverage

🎧 Squawk on the Street, May 6, 2026 Key Guest: Jeremiah Buckley, Janus Henderson Portfolio Manager One of the most substantive fundamental takes of the week. Buckley, who holds NVDA as his top position, argued that "Nvidia is growing faster and is at a lower multiple relative to some of the other semiconductor names." He flagged hyperscaler custom silicon (Alphabet TPUs, Amazon Trainium) as a narrative headwind, but maintained NVDA is "very attractive within semiconductors." He also noted semis now represent 22% of the S&P 500, up from 6% a year ago.

🎧 Squawk on the Street, May 8, 2026 Key Guests: Jim Cramer; Michael Intrater, CoreWeave CEO Cramer made his boldest call of the week: NVIDIA will reach a $10 trillion market cap. At $5.26T today, Faber noted that's "less than a double from here." Cramer also cited NVIDIA as having the #1 revenue per employee in tech. CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrater described NVIDIA-powered infrastructure as "without question the best solution in market for delivering parallelized computing." Also discussed: ARM CEO Rene Haas flagged the CPU-to-GPU ratio could shift from 1:4–8 GPUs per CPU toward parity, a potential structural headwind to watch.

🎧 CNBC Fast Money, May 6, 2026 Key Guests: Karen Feinerman; Gene Munster, Deepwater Asset Management; Steve Grasso The most balanced panel of the week. Three distinct views:

• Feinerman (Bullish): Added butterfly spreads, expects an "enormous quarter." "The lower the bar, the better."
• Munster (Cautiously trimming): Recently reduced his NVDA position. Argues the narrative is already universally positive, making incremental re-rating difficult. "The news is going to be great. But there's always this 'next year, next year' overhang."
• Grasso (Skeptical): "In the early innings, NVIDIA had no competition. Now all of their clients are their biggest competition", a pointed reference to hyperscaler custom silicon.

🎧 Stock Market Today With IBD, May 6, 2026 Key Voice: Ken Shreve NVDA was added back to IBD's Leaderboard as a "nibble." However, Shreve flagged a Relative Strength rating of just 63, below what would be expected for a true market leader. The stock rose 5.7% on May 6, its best single day in three months. Shreve expects NVDA to "retest its all-time high" and ultimately break out of its long consolidation.

🎧 Closing Bell, May 8, 2026 Key Voice: Mike Santoli Confirmed NVDA at all-time highs. Santoli's notable quote on the chip sector broadly: "You have to say it's overbought, but that doesn't mean it's over yet." Also discussed: iCapital's Shanali Bosick raised a critical question, "At what point do the AI CapEx vigilantes show up?", flagging the risk of hyperscalers trimming AI spending. NVDA board expansion announced: Suzanne Nora Johnson (former Intuit chairwoman, 20+ year Goldman Sachs veteran) joins effective July 13, 2026.

📌 Ecosystem & Supply Chain Coverage

🎧 The Rundown, May 6, 2026 Covered NVIDIA's $500M investment in Corning (with rights to invest up to $2.7B total), funding three new U.S. manufacturing plants in North Carolina and Texas for optical technologies. Fiber optic capacity to expand 10x. Also covered AMD's Helios RackScale AI system, now signed up by OpenAI and Meta, a direct NVIDIA competitive threat.

🎧 Bloomberg Intelligence, May 6, 2026 Key Guest: Kunjan Sabani, Bloomberg Intelligence Analyst Sabani offered the most nuanced supply chain view: "A few months ago it was power. Right now it's memory. It could definitely come down to optical components being supply constraints." He characterized AMD's GPU threat as a "4Q26 or 2027 weighted phenomenon", not a near-term risk to NVIDIA. This validates NVIDIA's aggressive optical investments.

🎧 Tech Brew Ride Home, May 6–7, 2026 Two-episode coverage of NVIDIA's co-packaged optics (CPO) strategy. Jensen Huang was quoted calling CPO "essential for the AI build-out" at GTC 2025. May 7 episode covered the Anthropic/XAI deal for 220,000 NVIDIA GPUs at the Colossus 1 facility, framed as a "victory lap" over Google TPUs and Amazon Trainium chips.

🎧 The Rundown, May 8, 2026 Covered NVIDIA's investment in Iron (Australian neocloud), a 5-year right to purchase 30 million shares at $70/share (potential $2.1B stake), while Iron signed a $3.4B deal to provide cloud services directly to NVIDIA for its own AI research. Host Zaid Admani flagged the circular financing concern: "Nobody's asking the circular financing question anymore, but it's worth keeping in mind that NVIDIA is still doing these deals."

🎧 The Rundown, May 9, 2026 Key Guest: Zaid Admani, Public.com The most macro-oriented episode of the week. Key data points discussed:

• Global chip sales hit $298B in Q1 2026, up 25% YoY; March alone up 79% YoY
• SOX Index up 55% YTD; April 2026 was its best month in 26 years
• Big-4 hyperscalers guiding >$725B in CapEx for 2026
• Some analysts project AI CapEx could hit $1T by 2027
• NVIDIA's $5B Intel investment and custom CPU partnership announced
• Warning: AMD now trades at 33x forward earnings vs. NVIDIA's 24x, NVDA is actually cheaper on this metric
• Admani: A 25–30% sector correction is "not just possible, it's probable" at some point

📌 Alternative / Independent Perspectives

🎧 Safe Dividend Investing, May 9, 2026 Key Voice: Ian Duncan MacDonald The most explicitly bearish take of the week from an income investor's perspective. MacDonald will not invest in NVIDIA, citing the 0.02% dividend yield and characterizing the monopoly as inherently temporary: "Incredible profits also attract incredible numbers of competitors." However, he acknowledged NVIDIA's 60.1% operating margin, the highest among the top 7 AI stocks. Notable for income-focused investors.

🎧 20VC, May 9, 2026 Key Guest: Cliff Weitzman, Speechify CEO Most colorful bull case of the week. Weitzman's brother holds a 3x leveraged NVIDIA option that is now ~36x up since 2022. Weitzman: "I don't know of a company in the history of the world that has made as much profit as NVIDIA today." Views the ~35x revenue multiple as reasonable given the growth trajectory.

🎧 This Week in Startups, May 6, 2026 Key Guest: Michael Eisenberg, VC Highlighted two startup challengers (unverified VC portfolio claims):

• Nexarp: "Badass 2.0" model allegedly beats NVIDIA's Cosmos by 2.5–3x at an order of magnitude smaller model size
• Nick Silicon: Chips allegedly scale compute/power exponentially vs. NVIDIA's linear generation-to-generation improvements Note: These are early-stage, unverified claims from a VC with portfolio stakes, treat with appropriate skepticism.

🎧 PBD Podcast / Valuetainment, May 6–7, 2026 Covered NVIDIA's "AI-Ready Homes" initiative, partnership with PulteGroup and startup Span to install small fractional data center nodes in homes. Audience poll: 75% of respondents would NOT allow NVIDIA to install a mini data center in their home, citing privacy and health concerns. Interesting sentiment data on consumer reception of NVIDIA's residential AI push.

🏆 Analyst & Expert Scorecard This Week

⚠️ Top Risks to Watch

1. Regulatory/Export Controls, Chip smuggling allegations via Thailand/Alibaba; Jensen Huang on China trip with Trump
2. Circular Financing, NVIDIA investing in its own customers (CoreWeave, Iron)
3. Overbought Technicals, Nasdaq 100 RSI at highest since mid-2024; put/call at lows
4. AI CapEx Vigilantes, Hyperscaler spending pullback risk flagged by iCapital
5. Demand Pull-Forward, Enterprise front-running orders ahead of price increases
6. Competitive Broadening, AMD, Intel custom silicon, and startup challengers gaining narrative traction
7. Multiple Ceiling, Universally positive narrative limits re-rating upside per Munster

📅 Key Dates

This newsletter is compiled from publicly available podcast discussions and news sources for informational purposes only. It does not constitute investment advice.

Sources

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