Nvidia shares have dropped 9% over the past three months as investors question whether Big Tech's enormous AI infrastructure spending will pay off. The slide comes even as Nvidia still controls 86% of the GPU data-center market and posted 85% revenue growth, while cloud giants that showed clearer AI monetization gained nearly $1.5 trillion in combined market value during earnings week.
Nvidia shares have fallen 9% over the past three months as investors grow skeptical that Big Tech's spending on AI infrastructure will pay off. Oracle has tumbled 28% over the same stretch.
Circular AI deals unsettle Nvidia investors
Some of that skepticism centers on Nvidia's financing arrangements. The company is in talks to provide OpenAI with $250 billion in funding to help build data centers, while separately discussing how it would supply the GPUs those centers need.
Nvidia also struck a $500 billion infrastructure deal with SK Group, parent of memory maker SK Hynix, and investors pushed the stock lower on that news too. Some shareholders question whether Nvidia can grow sales without lending money to the companies buying its chips.
Big Tech's earnings week set a new bar for AI spending
But most of the AI buildout runs through other channels: tech companies plan to invest $750 billion in AI infrastructure this year, most of it without direct Nvidia financing, feeding Nvidia's GPU sales regardless. Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet added nearly $1.5 trillion in combined market value during earnings week as their cloud units showed customers already paying for AI infrastructure. Amazon Web Services revenue alone rose 37% from a year earlier.
Meta and Apple fared worse. Meta erased over $85 billion in market value as investors questioned the payoff on its AI spending. Apple separately shed more than $350 billion in market cap after guiding to slower revenue growth.
Jefferies estimates Big Tech's AI spend is on track to reach about $800 billion in the next 12 months. Investors now want proof that spending is "sufficiently profitable to warrant all of this investment", in the words of Jefferies banker Jason Greenberg.
AI commitments near $2.4 trillion industrywide
Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft have collectively locked in close to $2.4 trillion in long-term AI infrastructure spending, according to Bloomberg figures cited by Crypto Briefing. Alphabet alone disclosed $902 billion in purchase commitments and leases. Those same companies already watched $2.7 trillion in market value evaporate during a June 2026 selloff over returns concerns.
Nvidia's chip dominance keeps bulls in the trade
Nvidia's own numbers still support the bull case. Revenue rose 85% in Q1 fiscal 2027 to $81.6 billion. Diluted earnings jumped 140% to $1.87 per share in the same quarter.
Nvidia also debuted its next-generation Vera CPU for AI, which the company says offers 50% better performance for AI agents than the x86 architecture used by Intel and AMD, opening a potential new line of business beyond GPUs.
Sources: TheStreet, The Motley Fool, Crypto Briefing
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