Nvidia’s rebound is more than a stock story. Trillions in AI chips, supercomputers, and data-centre buildouts are redrawing geopolitics. Compute is the new energy. Whoever controls the silicon stack will shape economies, security, next decade of growth and daily life. The race favors builders.
183 million credentials, including confirmed Gmail login details, has been added to the Have I Been Pwned database. The data, sourced from infostealer malware logs, highlights the persistent threat of credential-stealing software and the critical need for multi-factor authentication and passkeys.
Australian data centre leader AirTrunk, backed by Blackstone, has struck a US$3 billion deal with Saudi Arabia’s HUMAIN, aligning with the Trump administration’s push for Western AI dominance. The partnership cements the Gulf as the new frontier for AI infrastructure and geopolitical tech power.
Nvidia’s rebound is more than a stock story. Trillions in AI chips, supercomputers, and data-centre buildouts are redrawing geopolitics. Compute is the new energy. Whoever controls the silicon stack will shape economies, security, next decade of growth and daily life. The race favors builders.
The transformation of Nvidia from a $86.62 low-point during Trump's tumultuous Liberation Day tariff announcements in April 2025 to a $212.19 peak by late October represents one of the most spectacular corporate comebacks in modern market history.
Trading at $202.89 as of 31 October with a market capitalisation hovering near $4.94 trillion, the semiconductor giant has not merely recovered from the trade war turbulence but emerged as the undisputed architect of the artificial intelligence era. The stock's 145% surge from its April nadir to October's zenith underscores a profound realisation rippling through global markets: the infrastructure powering generative AI has become as consequential to economic growth as electricity generation itself.
Jensen Huang's metamorphosis from chief executive to AI diplomat has paralleled his company's ascent, with the Taiwan-born engineer traversing continents throughout 2025 to forge bilateral and trilateral partnerships that transcend traditional commercial arrangements.
During his South Korean sojourn ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, Huang secured commitments from Samsung for high-bandwidth memory development, negotiated data centre investments with SK Telecom, and cemented Hyundai collaborations for automotive AI applications. These diplomatic manoeuvres extend beyond Asia: Nvidia announced a landmark $100 billion letter of intent with OpenAI to construct next-generation supercomputing infrastructure, whilst simultaneously investing $1 billion for a 2.9% stake in Nokia to penetrate AI communications markets.
NVIDIA GTC Washington, D.C. Keynote with CEO Jensen Huang: Nokia to Build AI-Native 6G on New NVIDIA Arc.
The company's establishment of a $1 billion start-up fund further cements its position not merely as a hardware vendor but as the venture architect of the AI economy.
Whilst Nvidia commands the commanding heights, competitors are mounting formidable challenges that illuminate the sector's explosive growth trajectory. AMD has orchestrated a remarkable pivot from Intel's shadow, with shares surging 99% year-to-date through October 2025, outperforming even the vaunted Magnificent Seven cohort from the previous year. The company's multi-billion dollar OpenAI partnership—under which the frontier lab will purchase tens of thousands of AMD chips—signals a strategic diversification amongst hyperscalers seeking alternatives to Nvidia's dominance. Oracle's 67% stock appreciation year-to-date, propelled by a staggering $300 billion cloud-computing contract with OpenAI spanning approximately five years, demonstrates how the AI infrastructure boom is enriching the entire ecosystem.
Meta's struggles articulate the sector's harsh realities: massive capital expenditure without coherent monetisation strategies yields investor scepticism rather than enthusiasm. The social media titan's stock languishes despite infrastructure investments approaching those of its peers, highlighting that AI supremacy demands not merely computational muscle but viable business models and talent acquisition capabilities. Collectively, Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, and Meta are deploying $400 billion in capital expenditures throughout 2025, predominantly directed toward AI infrastructure—a sum economists increasingly characterise as representing a 100-basis-point impact on US GDP growth.
Analyst sentiment remains overwhelmingly positive following Nvidia's 29 October Washington GTC conference, where CEO Jensen Huang unveiled $500 billion in cumulative Blackwell and Rubin chip bookings and partnerships to construct seven supercomputers for the US Department of Energy.
Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya raised his price target to $275 from $235, representing nearly 37% upside, stating:
"Following a very positive meeting with Nvidia's CFO Colette Kress and the IR team after the CEO's keynote at the GTC trade show in Washington, our confidence in Nvidia has strengthened".
Arya highlighted solid revenue visibility, strong supply chain alignment including multiple memory suppliers, and no reliance on China as key takeaways, concluding that "the valuation at 32x/25x projected PE for 2026/2027 remains attractive".
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said on Wednesday that the artificial intelligence boom is different from the dotcom bubble of the late 1990s.
"This is different in the sense that these companies, the companies that are so highly valued, actually have earnings and stuff like that,"
Powell stated during a news conference following the Fed's two-day policy meeting. Powell didn't name specific vendors, but chipmaker Nvidia has emerged as the world's most valuable company, surpassing $5 trillion in market capitalisation on 29 October 2025.
Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider maintained a "Buy" rating with a $210 price target, noting: "While management announced multiple partnerships across various sectors, what caught our attention was the projection of $500 billion in cumulative Datacenter revenue by 2025-26. This estimate exceeds our and Street expectations of $453 billion and $447 billion by 10% and 12%, respectively". Schneider emphasised that this enhanced visibility into 2026 revenues represents "a significant positive for the stock".
Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes lifted his target to $300 from $275, stating he felt "even better about long-term prospects" and now sees "a glide path to $800 billion-plus in revenues by the end of the decade". He cited Nvidia's positioning with "two enormous customers," Microsoft and OpenAI, as helping sustain growth.
The Trump-Xi summit in Busan on 30 October yielded a one-year trade truce that reduced tariffs on Chinese goods from 57% to 47%, whilst securing Beijing's commitments on rare earth exports and fentanyl interdiction.
Donald Trump and Xi Jinping discuss US-China relations in historic meeting
Trump's declaration that "all rare earth matters are resolved" carries profound implications for semiconductor manufacturing, given China's 90% dominance of refined rare earth production essential to advanced chip fabrication.
However, the future of Nvidia's advanced Blackwell AI chip sales to China remains deliberately ambiguous: whilst Trump characterised US chip technology as a decade ahead of competitors, Beijing has discouraged domestic firms from utilising Nvidia's China-specific H20 chips in favour of homegrown alternatives.
Nvidia's development of the B30A—a downgraded Blackwell variant with approximately half the computing capability of standard models yet far exceeding Chinese domestic production—illustrates the delicate calibration required to navigate geopolitical constraints whilst maintaining market presence. Current export restrictions prohibit sales of cutting-edge AI chips to China, though the administration is reportedly drafting regulations enabling revenue collection from such transactions.
Trump's transactional approach to technology exports, viewing advanced semiconductors as bargaining leverage for broader concessions, introduces volatility into an industry accustomed to regulatory consistency.
Samsung is building a facility equipped with 50,000 Nvidia GPUs to automate chip manufacturing, marking a transformative collaboration between the world's leading AI chipmaker and Asia's semiconductor manufacturing powerhouse.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang outlines the next phase of accelerated computing and AI — from national AI infrastructure and quantum computing to robotics and reindustrialisation.
Nvidia Gtc Washington, D.C. Keynote With Ceo Jensen Huang: Source: Nvidia
The partnership comes after Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang announced in Washington, D.C., on 28 October that Nvidia was collaborating with companies including Palantir, Eli Lilly, CrowdStrike, and Uber. Shortly after the speech, Huang was spotted in South Korea drinking beer with Samsung Chairman Lee Jae-yong and other business leaders, according to local media. Other Korean companies, including SK Group and Hyundai, are also deploying similar GPU quantities, with SK Telecom currently constructing data centres where Nvidia will reportedly supply chips to SK Group.
On 30 October, the three billionaires—whose combined net worth exceeds $195 billion—met for what became one of the most publicised business dinners in recent memory. As the trio sat down for Korea's beloved "chimaek" (fried chicken and beer), more than 1,000 onlookers, journalists, and company staff filled the quiet street outside, with police eventually setting up barricades as the crowd overflowed onto the road. National broadcasters aired live footage of the executives eating, drinking, and talking, whilst fellow diners inside took pictures on their phones.
Japan has emerged as Asia's counterweight to Chinese AI aspirations, committing combined government and corporate investments exceeding ¥10 trillion ($65 billion) through 2030. The government allocated ¥2 trillion ($13.2 billion) explicitly for 2024-2025, channelling ¥1.05 trillion towards next-generation chip and quantum computing research, ¥471.4 billion for domestic advanced chip production support, and ¥920 billion to Rapidus for its Hokkaido semiconductor factory targeting 2027 mass production. NTT Corporation leads private sector commitments with $59 billion over five years through 2027, including a $16.4 billion NTT Data buyout to consolidate AI strategy, whilst SoftBank commits over $40 billion through its Stargate project partnership with OpenAI.
South Korea has emerged as a strategic partner in NVIDIA's global AI expansion, with CEO Jensen Huang announcing during the APEC Summit in Gyeongju that more than 260,000 NVIDIA GPUs will be deployed across the nation to establish what both parties describe as "sovereign AI" infrastructure—marking one of the largest national investments in artificial intelligence. The comprehensive deployment involves both public and private sector commitments, with the Lee Jae-myung administration pledging over $115 billion in AI investment through public-private collaboration under its Five-Year Policy Blueprint.
Huang characterised the initiative as transformative for South Korea's economic positioning, stating:
"Just as Korea's physical factories have inspired the world with sophisticated ships, cars, chips and electronics, the nation can now produce intelligence as a new export that will drive global transformation."
During this week's whirlwind AI diplomatic tour, Jensen Huang continued building announcements around Japan's AI Promotion Act, enacted on 28 May 2025, which establishes an "innovation-first" legislative framework with voluntary compliance, positioning the nation as what government declarations term the "most AI-friendly country". The strategic collaboration with Fujitsu targets robotics, healthcare, manufacturing and customer service sectors by 2030, whilst SoftBank continues building Japan's most powerful AI supercomputer using NVIDIA Blackwell platforms following earlier projections of a 320-fold increase in AI computing demand by 2030.
This sovereign AI strategy extends beyond Japan and South Korea. Australia's emerging data centre sector, led by NextDC, Firmus and Airtrunk, is attracting international partnerships that mirror joint venture models proliferating globally. Homegrown initiatives such as Maincode's Matilda AI and Sovereign Australia AI—which plans to run on 256 NVIDIA Blackwell B200 GPUs hosted in NextDC facilities—aim to establish Australia as a regional AI hub by combining international infrastructure with domestic data centre capacity.
As generative AI accelerates beyond prediction, the infrastructure builders—the LEGO architects of the artificial intelligence revolution—are reshaping not merely the data centre market but the architecture of 21st-century capitalism itself. The transition from AI experimentation to AI-as-a-service models throughout the latter half of this decade will spawn entire industries, catalyse developer ecosystems spanning continents, and potentially contribute percentage points to national GDP calculations previously unimaginable for a single technology sector.
Nvidia's trajectory from April's trade war casualties to October's trillion-dollar triumph encapsulates this transformation: the company has evolved from a gaming chip manufacturer into the indispensable partner for nations seeking technological sovereignty and corporations pursuing competitive survival.
The uncertainties surrounding US-China chip exports, the sustainability of unprecedented capital expenditure cycles, and the viability of AI monetisation strategies will determine whether 2026 represents consolidation or continued exponential growth. What remains incontrovertible is that the builders of AI infrastructure have constructed the scaffolding upon which the next decade's economic growth will either flourish or falter.
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