Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang was seemingly everywhere in the third quarter.
His appearances included an earnings call, media interviews, tech conferences, and dinner and lunch events with President Trump, to say nothing of his spending $12.9 billion to buy Hugging Face.
All of the visibility for the world’s most popular tech CEO and his iconic black leather jackets appears to have paid off for Nvidia investors.
Shares of Nvidia are on track to surge 17% in the third quarter, which officially comes to a close today. By comparison, the S&P 500 (^GSPC) is up 4.3% in the quarter. Nvidia’s stock is now up 23% year to date.
230.66 +3.44 (+1.52%)
As of 3:28:01 PM EDT. Market Open.
NVDA ^GSPC
Of course, there is more to the Nvidia third quarter stock bounce than Jensen Huang’s omnipresence.
The king of AI chips revealed a stunning new $150 billion stock buyback plan on Monday — the largest share repurchase authorization increase in history. It brings the company’s total buyback authorization to $235 billion.
Read more: What Nvidia’s $150 billion stock buyback means for shareholders and potential investors
Huang reiterated his expectation that the AI market will reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030 during a talk at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia & Tech conference earlier this month. It was exactly one year ago that he made the initial prediction at the same event.
On its latest August earnings call, Huang said he sees 70% revenue growth for fiscal year 2028. This was above analyst forecasts for 45% growth. The sales gain would be larger — in excess of 100% — if not for memory chip shortages, Huang said.
Nvidia is ultimately still the AI chip player to beat, Salesforce (CRM) CEO Marc Benioff said.
“[Huang] only has a limited set of customers who are just building these enormous data centers that are material to his business. … What’s exquisite about Nvidia is that they have the product for the moment. And there’s just nothing like this. We’ve never seen anything quite like this in our industry. It’s really incredible,” Benioff told Yahoo Finance this month from his annual Dreamforce event.
Huang joined Benioff for a keynote speech at Dreamforce.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaks during the keynote address at Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference at the Moscone Center on Sept. 15, 2026, in San Francisco, Calif. (Benjamin Fanjoy/Getty Images) · Benjamin Fanjoy via Getty Images
Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance’s Executive Editor, host of the Sozzi Unleashed morning show, the ‘Power Players With Brian Sozzi’ podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance’s editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email brian.sozzi@yahoofinance.com.
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