Key Takeaways
Nvidia and other semiconductor stocks rallied Friday after Amazon followed cloud peers with a massive AI spending forecast.Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC Friday that demand has been “going through the roof.”
America’s biggest cloud giants are doubling down on their investments in AI hardware. That hasn’t helped their shares lately—but chipmakers are getting a lift as their orders keep rolling in.
Shares of AI chip leader Nvidia (NVDA) were up 8% in late trading Friday helping send the Dow Jones Industrial Average above 50,000 points for the first time, while Amazon (AMZN) shares slumped a day after the cloud provider followed other major Nvidia clients with a massive AI spending forecast.
Other semiconductors stocks including Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Broadcom (AVGO) and Marvell Technology (MRVL) also surged, sending the PHLX Semiconductor Sector Index (SOX) up nearly 6%.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC in a televised interview Friday that demand has been “going through the roof” as cloud heavyweights lead what he believes could become the “largest infrastructure buildout in human history.”
Why This Matters to Investors
As major cloud providers such as Amazon prepare to shoulder huge costs to build out their AI capacity, investor support has flagged amid worries about their returns. However, makers of chips and other hardware for data centers have seen their stocks surge on the commitments.
Investments planned by Amazon, Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT) and Google parent Alphabet (GOOGL)—all buyers of Nvidia chips—could collectively reach an estimated $650 billion in 2026, after the giants recently updated investors on their financials.
Huang also said Friday he believe the AI industry could be reaching an “inflection point” as the technology becomes more widely used across different industries.
With Friday’s gains, shares of Nvidia have gotten back to break-even for 2026 after a rough start to the year, and are up more than 40% over the past 12 months.