Nvidia Just Lost China. The Stock Still Rallied.
The world’s most important chipmaker got sideswiped by U.S. policy—and printed $18.8B in profit anyway. Here’s what investors are missing.
Nvidia's China business is dead.
That’s not opinion. That’s Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s own CEO, describing how U.S. chip controls “effectively closed” a $50 billion market.
The company just ate a $4.5 billion charge for unsold H20 chips, lost $2.5 billion in expected sales, and watched its gross margin drop from 71% to 61%.
And yet—Nvidia’s stock is ripping.
I run NorthTech Capital, a research-driven investment firm focused on mega-cap tech. We track companies like Nvidia obsessively because they’re the tip of the spear in global capital flows.
What Nvidia just reported isn’t just an earnings beat—it’s a masterclass in strategic resilience, monopoly economics, and the limits of geopolitics.
The numbers are stunning:
$44.06 billion in quarterly revenue — $750 million above estimates.
Net income up 26% YoY to $18.8 billion.
Data centre revenue up 73% to $39.1 billion—88% of total sales.
$14.1 billion in share buybacks — more than most companies generate in total revenue.
Even with China torched and guidance technically below Wall Street’s $45.9 billion forecast, investors didn’t care. Nvidia popped 6% in after-hours trading and now sits just 5% below its all-time high.
This isn’t just AI euphoria. It’s something deeper.
Here’s the real takeaway:
Nvidia is no longer a semiconductor company. It’s the capital stack for the AI economy.
Microsoft is deploying “hundreds of thousands” of Nvidia’s Blackwell GPUs. Cloud providers are racing to integrate Nvidia’s networking products.
Demand is global, political risks be damned. The firm isn’t reacting to a trend—it’s dictating the future.
Export bans? Shrug. Margin compression? Brief.
China’s $50B in lost TAM? Replaced by sovereign AI buildouts in the U.S., Middle East, and Europe.
Huang knows it too. On the call, he sounded less like a tech CEO and more like an infrastructure czar.
Nvidia’s chips aren’t just parts. They’re the picks and shovels for a new economic epoch.
So what should you do with that insight?
Stop thinking about Nvidia as a stock. Start thinking of it as sovereign infrastructure.
The market isn’t just rewarding Nvidia’s earnings—it’s pricing in optionality on global AI. Every megaproject from Abu Dhabi to AWS runs through Nvidia silicon.
Until that changes, the company will keep compounding—even when policy and politics try to get in the way.
The next time a headline screams “Nvidia in trouble,” remember: this is a company that just lost access to one of the biggest markets in the world... and didn’t miss a step.
Follow the footprints. Not the headlines.
Read more at northtechcapital.com.