Why Wall Street wasn’t won over by Nvidia’s big conference

Nvidia's highly anticipated GTC 2026 conference, featuring CEO Jensen Huang's 2.5-hour keynote, failed to rally Wall Street as the company's stock price dropped during the presentation. Despite Huang announcing staggering projections—including $1 trillion in purchase orders for Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips by 2027, labeling the AI agent ecosystem a $35 trillion market, and calling physical AI/robotics a $50 trillion opportunity—investors focused on broader uncertainties about AI adoption timelines and fears of a market bubble. This created a stark contrast between financial market skepticism and the bullish atmosphere in Silicon Valley.

Analysts explained the disconnect. Futurum CEO Daniel Neuman noted that while enterprise AI adoption is accelerating, the return on investment (ROI) remains 'undefined' in public reports, creating market uncertainty. Meanwhile, Nvidia's business fundamentals remain extraordinarily strong, with 73% year-over-year revenue growth last quarter and recent confirmation of Amazon's plan to purchase 1 million GPUs for AWS by 2027. Kevin Cook of Zacks Investment Research observed that 'the whole stock market is propped up by Nvidia,' whose technology forms the critical infrastructure for countless AI-driven companies across hardware, software, and even physical AI applications like Caterpillar's systems.

The underlying tension reveals a fundamental market divide: while Nvidia continues to execute phenomenally and dominate AI infrastructure, Wall Street is grappling with how to value an industry transforming at unprecedented speed. The company's forward-looking projections, though massive, introduced new variables into an already complex valuation equation. This episode highlights how even market-leading performance can be overshadowed by macroeconomic narratives about technological disruption cycles.