Nvidia (NVDA) Climbs After First Day of its GTC Conference

Nvidia (NVDA) stock closed 1.65% higher yesterday on the first day of its 2026 GTC conference, as CEO Jensen Huang took the stage to announce a new era of AI infrastructure. The highlights included the upcoming "Vera Rubin" architecture and a stunning projection of a $1 trillion revenue opportunity for its latest chips by 2027. The opening day performance marked a notable shift in tone for NVDA, which entered the conference under pressure after several months of consolidation. By the close, the market appeared to treat GTC not as a routine developer event, but as a potential reset moment for the AI trade. 

Huang unveiled the next-generation Vera Rubin architecture, designed to succeed the Blackwell platform, with systems slated for delivery in the second half of 2026. A central theme was Nvidia’s emphasis on the new architecture, which management positioned as a major step forward in efficiency and cost reduction for AI inference. According to conference commentary, Rubin is designed to deliver substantially higher performance per watt than earlier platforms, addressing growing concerns around power consumption and return on investment for large scale AI deployments.

Addressing AI demand, Huang stated that revenue from Blackwell and the new Rubin architecture is expected to reach at least $1 trillion through 2027, effectively doubling previous forecasts. This is a significant increase from the company’s prior long term expectations. The keynote showcased a "Groq-based" inference chip designed to accelerate agentic AI, along with new physical AI robots, reinforcing the company's dominance in high-performance computing. Nvidia also announced the "Vera Rubin Space-1" module, developing processor technology for orbital data centers in partnership with firms like Axiom Space and Planet Labs. 

The moves are part of Huang's bid to firm up the company's position in so-called inference computing, the process of answering queries, where its graphics processors face greater competition from central processing units and custom processors built by the likes of Google (GOOGL). Nvidia chips have dominated the process of AI model training, which has been the focus of recent years. "The inference inflection has arrived," Huang said. "And demand just keeps on going up," he added.

Nvidia also announced the Nvidia NemoClaw stack for the OpenClaw agent platform - which lets users install Nvidia Nemotron models and the newly announced Nvidia OpenShell runtime in a single command. "OpenClaw opened the next frontier of AI to everyone and became the fastest-growing open source project in history," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia . "Mac and Windows are the operating systems for the personal computer. OpenClaw is the operating system for personal AI. This is the moment the industry has been waiting for - the beginning of a new renaissance in software."

Trading volume on Monday was heavy, running roughly 18% above the three-month average, signaling strong investor interest in the announcements. The stock had been facing resistance at its 50-day moving average prior to the keynote and has been consolidating between its 50 and 200-Day simple moving averages. The stock spiked to just under $189 a share during the keynote but slid to settle just above $183 at Monday’s close.

"This is how much business is on the books," Huang said regarding the new 2027 demand projections. "In fact, we are going to be short". Does this mean that Nvidia can break out of its recent range-bound trading? Time will tell, but the $190 level has been an area of resistance this year despite robust earnings and now elevated expectations. The GTC conference goes until Thursday of this week so maybe the CEO has some more rabbits to pull out of his hat. 

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