Wall Street clashes on Nvidia's AI cycle expiration date following Jensen Huang's CES keynote

Jensen Huang may have just delivered his most ambitious blueprint yet, but Wall Street is increasingly divided on whether Nvidia’s (NVDA) breakneck growth is reaching a ceiling or just entering its second act.

“I think if you walk out of there thinking that this is an AI bubble, then you had a little too much something to drink in Vegas,” Wedbush analyst Dan Ives told Yahoo Finance’s Opening Bid. “The reality is that … we’re talking about trillions of dollars being spent.”

His comments came shortly after CEO Jensen Huang took the stage at CES 2026 to unveil the Vera Rubin platform — a suite of six new chips destined for mass production in the second half of the year. While Huang’s keynote focused on physical AI — robots, autonomous cars, edge computing — the debate on the floor remains on the cold, hard math of data centers.

While Ives remains the ultimate tech bull, eyeing a $6 trillion market cap for Nvidia, DA Davidson analyst Gil Luria offered a more sober perspective. The skepticism lies in the “cycle,” he noted.

For two years, Nvidia has traded almost exclusively on the explosive demand for its AI GPUs. Luria suggested the market is starting to price in a rollover, questioning if the next phase can arrive fast enough to pick up the slack.

“Why Nvidia is so inexpensive is that really all it’s pricing in is a data center market that’s getting close to a peak,” Luria said. He argued that Huang is already pivoting to “what’s next” — putting GPUs into robots and automobiles. Still, “timing” remains the ultimate question, Luria noted.

Meanwhile, the competition isn’t sitting still. A day after Huang’s keynote, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su introduced the concept of “yottaflop” — a measure of computing power so vast it was previously theoretical.

While Nvidia remains AI’s gold standard, Ives said the market is underestimating AMD’s potential to capture the “next stage” of the revolution.

“They are going to be a core player in this next stage of the AI revolution,” Ives said. “I don’t think that’s being factored into AMD’s stock.”

However, the most telling part of the Wall Street clash isn’t about the giants, but the infrastructure supporting them. Luria recently issued a “reluctant upgrade” on CoreWeave (CRWV) but made it clear his bearishness hasn’t evaporated. He views players like CoreWeave and Oracle (ORCL) as “marginal,” accusing them of borrowing money to build “speculative capacity” while “destroying” shareholder value.

“We continue to stay away from them,” he said.

A major catalyst for the continued “AI party” could come from outside Nvidia’s walls. Luria pointed to OpenAI’s (OPAI.PVT) reported target to raise $100 billion in equity at a staggering $750 billion to $830 billion valuation by the end of March.

If OpenAI hits that number, the “party goes into overdrive,” as every major player doubles down on AI infrastructure. Still, Luria remains cautious, suggesting OpenAI “may be a little too ambitious” in its raise. If the funding environment cools, the massive orders for Nvidia’s Rubin chips might not look so guaranteed.

Francisco Velasquez is a Reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on LinkedIn, X, and Instagram. Story tips? Email him at francisco.velasquez@yahooinc.com.

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