Nvidia stock slips despite China push, strong AI demand outlook

Nvidia stock edged lower on Friday even as the chipmaker continued to expand its global artificial intelligence footprint through new partnerships, product initiatives, and growing demand for its next-generation processors.

Shares of Nvidia NVDA slipped 0.18% during trading.

The modest decline came despite a series of developments that highlighted the company's efforts to strengthen its position in AI infrastructure markets both inside and outside the United States.

The company has reportedly begun informing Chinese customers that they can place orders for its new Vera central processing units, with shipments potentially beginning in August.

The move could provide Nvidia with another avenue into the Chinese market, where export restrictions have limited sales of some of its advanced AI products.

According to Reuters, one major Chinese cloud provider is preparing an initial order for more than 300 servers built around Nvidia Vera chips.

Customers are expected to first test the systems in overseas data centers before deciding whether to proceed with larger deployments.

Nvidia reportedly sees Vera as a potential $20 billion revenue opportunity by the end of its fiscal year in January.

Unlike the company's graphics processing units, which remain subject to tighter US export restrictions, the processor business may face fewer regulatory hurdles.

Nvidia expands AI infrastructure partnerships

Beyond China, Nvidia continues to broaden its reach through major AI infrastructure agreements.

Australian cloud-infrastructure provider SharonAI Holdings announced a six-year partnership with Nvidia to build 72 megawatts of new data-center capacity across Australia.

The project will deploy up to 40,000 Nvidia AI processors to support startups, enterprises, and university researchers.

Under the agreement, Nvidia will receive revenue from processor sales as well as a share of cloud revenue generated through SharonAI's hosting services.

Additional signs of demand have emerged globally. Nebius Group plans to invest approximately $2.275 billion in next-generation facilities in the United Kingdom powered by Nvidia's Vera Rubin products.

Meanwhile, Nvidia's partnership with SK Telecom aims to build AI-capable cloud infrastructure in South Korea focused on both AI training and inference workloads.

“Inference is crucial to the outlook, as it is the application of AI and a much larger market segment than infrastructure and training,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has previously emphasized, highlighting the growing importance of AI deployment beyond model development.

Analysts remain bullish on AI demand

Analysts continue to express confidence in Nvidia's outlook following recent industry events, including the Taiwan Computex conference.

Analysts at Wedbush and UBS believe demand for GPUs remains strong while supply capacity continues to lag, creating favorable conditions for Nvidia in the coming quarters.

Wedbush also suggested that the AI hardware upgrade cycle may be accelerating as demand for Nvidia's Blackwell platform remains stronger than expected later in its product cycle.

The company is currently covered by 54 analysts, with approximately 95% maintaining Buy recommendations.

Supply chain investments support long-term strategy

Nvidia has also continued investing in technologies designed to strengthen its long-term AI ecosystem.

One of its latest acquisitions is Kumo AI, an enterprise-focused predictive agent platform that helps forecast operational needs using customer data.

The technology is expected to complement Nvidia's broader physical AI strategy, including warehouse automation applications.

At the same time, Nvidia continues to invest heavily in future production capacity and supply-chain resilience.

While industry-wide constraints remain, analysts view Nvidia as one of the best-positioned companies to navigate potential shortages and meet rising AI demand.