Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told employees this week that despite the company’s blockbuster results, growing concerns about an AI bubble put the company in a no-win situation, audio from an all-hands meeting confirmed. business insider.
“The market didn’t appreciate our great quarter,” Huang said Thursday, less than 24 hours after Nvidia reported new record profits and said it “looks like” $5 trillion in revenue for the remainder of 2025 and 2026.
Instead of rewarding that beat, investors delivered a shocking reversal, with the stock briefly rising and then falling on Thursday, weighing on broader AI trading by the end of the session.
Huang said expectations for Nvidia have become so extreme that Wall Street now sees danger in both directions.
“If you have a bad quarter, it’s an indication that there’s an AI bubble. If you have a great quarter, you’re fueling the AI bubble,” he told employees. “If it had been just a hair out of place, if it had creaked just a little bit, the whole world would have come crashing down.”
These comments provide a valuable glimpse into how the faces of the AI boom are viewing the growing backlash against the AI boom, and how closely they are watching the market’s whiplash reaction.
A devastating quarter that surprised investors
On paper, Nvidia gave investors everything they wanted. The company reported another surge in sales of its data center processors, the flagship products that power large-scale AI models (and Nvidia’s revenue), and raised its outlook for the current quarter. Investors said this was the kind of performance expected to start another six-month bull market.
Instead, the initial rise in stock prices was replaced by a widespread decline. Nvidia rose as much as 5% in early trading Thursday, but ended down about 3% as traders rotated through the big tech companies most closely tied to the AI boom.
The reversal compounded what has already been a painful blow to so-called AI trade. After months of a stifling bull market, investors are increasingly worried that tech giants are investing too aggressively in data centers, GPUs and networking equipment, with no guarantee they’ll generate enough returns to recoup their investments. Credit markets are starting to show early warning signs, with some focusing on the complex and debt-heavy financing structures behind building AI infrastructure.
A fresh macro jitter is layered on top. U.S. employment statistics released the same morning due to the government shutdown showed that the number of employees in September was higher than expected, but the unemployment rate was high. The contradictory data provided little clarity on whether the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates in December.
Some investors are closely monitoring the Fed’s various statements to gauge the situation, but with earnings season winding down and no clear trigger between now and the Fed’s next decision, many others appear to be taking advantage of the volatility to lock in profits from the year’s rally and exit the market.
“The broader narrative is not broken, it’s just being tested right now,” Nationwide’s Mark Hackett told Bloomberg. “Such periods often act as release valves rather than indicating true trend reversals.
“We’re basically holding the planet together.”‘
Inside Nvidia, Huang suggested that no one should be surprised that investors are jumping when so much of the AI buzz is being projected on one company.
He referenced an online meme that jokingly describes Nvidia as the linchpin of the global economy and the only thing standing between the United States and recession.
“Have you seen some?” he asked the employee. “We’re basically bringing the planet together, and that’s not a lie.”
This level of myth has propelled Nvidia’s market value into the stratosphere, making it the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. However, Mr. Huang also revealed that all closing dates have become risky activities.
“Expectations are so high that if it’s off even a little bit, people will think the whole story is broken,” he said.
Still, Huang pushed the idea that Nvidia is in charge of the frothier parts of AI trading. He stressed that the company’s job is to build the computing infrastructure that other companies need, not to monitor market price demand.
joke about $500 billion in losses
Even under pressure, Huang brightened up the meeting with his grave-whistling humor about Nvidia’s wild moves.
He joked about the “good old days” when the company had a $5 trillion market cap, playfully exaggerating its actual peak market cap, and then noted how much value has evaporated in recent weeks.
“No one in history has ever lost $500 billion in a few weeks,” he said. “You have to be someone who is worth a lot of money to lose $500 billion in a few weeks.”
Huang told employees he was “delighted” with the quarter and proud of their work, stressing that the company’s underlying business remains strong even in difficult market conditions.
