LOS ANGELES — Sales of Nvidia’s artificial intelligence chip Blackwell will be top of mind when the company releases its latest financial results Wednesday, with analysts eyeing future demand amid a Chinese upstart’s claim that it can train competitive AI models using far fewer resources.
Wall Street expects Nvidia to report fourth-quarter adjusted earnings of 85 cents per share on revenue of $38.08 billion, according to FactSet. The company’s net income is expected to reach $19.58 billion.
What happens with Nvidia matters for the entire U.S. stock market. The chip company has grown into the second-largest company on Wall Street, which means the stock’s movement carries more weight on the S&P 500 and other indexes than every company except Apple. The tech giant, based in Santa Clara, California, is now worth over $3 trillion.
Nvidia and other companies benefiting from the AI boom have been a major reason the S&P 500 has climbed to record after record recently, with the latest coming last week. Their explosion of profits has helped to propel the market despite worries about stubbornly high inflation and possible pain coming for the U.S. economy from tariffs and other policies of President Donald Trump.
Nvidia alone accounted for more than a fifth of all of the S&P 500 index’s total return last year. None of the other 499 companies in the index came close. If Nvidia can’t keep up its momentum, particularly when critics say its stock price has climbed too much and too…
