Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA ((NVDA Quick QuoteNVDA - Free Report) ), is a leader of global industrial policy in a way the world has never seen before.

Not because he has favor in the White House, which he often pushes back against, but because of two overarching themes of his leadership of the #1 AI hardware + software infrastructure company...

1. His vision about where accelerated computing can take the global economy and individual countries in terms of progress, productivity, and the potential elimination of poverty and disease -- not least of which includes his command of some of the most talented and passionate engineers on the planet.

2. His willingness to get on a jet several times a month to visit his partners and customers across the globe, from Beijing, Korea, and Taiwan to Saudi Arabia, London and Washington, DC -- all in an effort to manage relationships and explain the AI transformation that must happen, with or without NVIDIA GPUs.

The Quarter That Didn't Impress

Before NVIDIA's Q3 report last week I pointed out that sales forecasts by analysts for next year were still way too low at $275 billion and I told my followers and journalists that six months from now that number would be over $325 billion.

While the beat-and-raise quarter met selling and uncertainty, the analysts had to crunch the numbers in their spreadsheet models... and what did they do?

Yep, they raised next fiscal year from $275B to a consensus of $293B with the high estimate moving up to $327B.

See my preview here with very important comments from Jensen in his appearance at The Future of AI Conference in London two weeks ago...

AI Bubble Talk is Cheap -- How to Navigate the Worry

Why Are Analysts So Timid About the AI Revolution?

I don't know the precise answer to this question, but it could be fear about sticking one's neck out on the world's first $5 trillion company. Which is ridiculous considering I took the Street-high price target of $200 in June of 2024.

I suspect it is also worry about the "AI Bubble" fears. Who wants to say NVIDIA shares are going to $300 when the current correction could take it to $150 soon?

Here's what I told my TAZR Trader members last week...

The NVIDIA Conundrum

It was a great report and outlook from NVIDIA. And I'm surprised the stock is not trading over $200.

Clearly, large investors are worried about something else. I'll just provide my notes today and we'll go from there.

Right after the conference call, I spoke with journalist Shannon Carroll from Quartz.

We talked for about 30 mins and toward the end she wanted to know, despite my exuberance, if there was anything in the report or on the call that bothered me.

I went back through my notes and looking at the half-dozen analyst questions from major houses.... I said "No. It's their job to look for chinks in the armor and none could find any."

If they want to quibble about margins potentially slipping, all I can say is that when you are innovating on a one-year cadence that the hyperscalers keep demanding -- and you are doing 5 different very complex things to improve networking -- of course margins could slip from 75% to 70%.

But that should not impact the value and growth proposition of the #1 provider of AI infrastructure. This is not the fickle consumer iPhone cycle.

Cassandra Speaks

Michael Burry, who goes by Cassandra Unchained on X, was obviously NOT on the conference call. Or maybe he was and didn't want to admit it. Either way, he should have said so when he posted this afterward along with the now infamous Bloomberg infographic of the "circular AI spending"...

“Every company listed below has suspicious revenue recognition. The actual chart with ALL the give-and-take deals would be unreadable. The future will regard this a picture of fraud, not a flywheel. True end demand is ridiculously small. Almost all customers are funded by their dealers. If you can name OpenAI's auditor in 1 hour you win some pride.”

If you need to see the graphic, I posted it on the "whiteboard in my garage" over at Skool.

Cooker's take: Burry may eventually be right. The pockets of questionable excess in debt already got exposed for ORCL & CRWV. But I think he’s overall at least 2 years early.

NVIDIA Conference Call Highlights: The AI Bull is Alive & Well

Here were my notes I posted over on Skool the morning after...

Just got off phone with Bloomberg journalist Carmen Reinicke. Had a great chat about all-things NVIDIA. Some things I emphasized...

>>CFO Colette Kress with her bull horns on emphasizing Jensen's October GTC grandslam call for $500 billion in Blackwell and Rubin sales for 2025 and 2026.

Colette mentioned this was on track in her opening remarks. But the first question on call came from Joe Moore at Morgan Stanley about if this meant roughly another $350 billion to go over next 5 quarters and if there was any possibility of upside.

Colette grabbed the question with bullish gusto, citing being on track and “But we would be not finished if we didn't say that we'll probably be taking more orders. For example, just even today, our announcements with Saudi Arabia and that agreement in itself is 400,000 to 600,000 more GPUs over three years. Anthropic is also new. So there's definitely an opportunity for us to have more on top of the $500 billion that we announced.”

Cooker's take: I have new respect for Colette. Plus analysts are still way behind on next year's topline estimate which needs to climb from $275B to $325B. I like the new framing since GTC for the potential of 50% market share of a $3-4 trillion TAM in 2030.

>>As always, Jensen has a lot of explaining to do. But he's really teaching investors and analysts how to think about this transformational technology shift. This isn't about tweaking models for when the iPhone market might be saturated and sales peak.

He explains why datacenters need to be reinvented and rebuilt from the ground up to build enterprise economics on the new paradigm of accelerated compute. And he covers the Agentic-AI landscape for knowledge work and the needs of sovereign nation-states to not only control their own data, but to be able to mine and model it for growth and security.

But he didn't mention the massive compute needs of Physical-AI when billions of autonomous machines will be mingling with humans in factories, roads, workplaces, smart cities and smart homes. He needs to say this when explaining what an "AI Factory" is for like he did in London last week.

That's how I think he needs to get the market's mind off of the OpenAI black hole, and focused on what is happening for the global economy at an unprecedented scale and rate of change! Jensen is quietly screaming "We could do 50% market share of our $3-4 trillion TAM in 2030!" but I think he's getting tired of explaining that it's because this technology shift is like no other.

>>ORCL and CRWV became the "OpenAI proxies" for the market to punish excess in the upside down debt pyramids.

>>I’m surprised the price target bumps are so timid. But one of the highest bumps, to $320, came from Ben Reitzes with Melius who was on the call and asked a tough question about NVIDIA using its cash flow to invest in the ecosystem partners: "I think there's there's just a lot of confusion out there about how these how these deals work and your criteria for doing those, like the Anthropic, the OpenAI's, etcetera."

>> In response to Ben's question, Jensen also emphasized how they are feeding the developer ecosystem. This has been a big key to success since the 2010's when Gaming dominated. Get them building on CUDA and they will never leave! And they will tell their enterprise bosses the same!

>>Awesome quotes from Jensen:

"When you are growing at the rate we are, how could anything be easy."

"We created a whole new industry. Our success will drive the economics."

"Blackwell sales are off the charts. Cloud GPUs are sold out."

"Now we own it all." (in reference to partnerships with anyone serious about accelerated compute)

Be sure to join me over on Skool at my whiteboard where I also show some key slides from the Jensen Manifesto.

Here's a good example of analyst reactions...

Truist: 'NVIDIA Remains "THE" AI Company' PT to $255

This is from William Stein, one of my top 5 semiconductor analysts from way back...

We believe Nvidia has significant additional growth & stock upside potential. NVDA delivered a clean beat & raise qtr.

Two more major factors influence our model: takeaways from GTC-DC, and management's increasingly believable assertion that AI is not in a bubble, reinforcing its 50% AI TAM CAGR outlook and $3-4T TAM by 2030.

So, our CY26 EPS goes to $7.30 (from $6.50) and PT to $255 (from $228) based on 35x (2x prem. to peers). We believe meaningful upside potential persists from (1) ASP increases for Rubin, (2) unit upside potential that comes through CY26, (3) potential ability to ship to China.

Bottom line on NVIDIA: Long-term investors are getting an excellent opportunity to buy NVDA near $175. Don't mess it up.