Nvidia Drops as Micron Rally Boosts Memory Stocks

Nvidia shares slipped after giving up premarket gains, falling about 1.3% to $196.76 in early trading after closing 0.5% lower the previous session. The decline came as memory-chip stocks advanced following stronger-than-expected results from Micron Technology.

Advanced Micro Devices and Intel also traded lower in the same session.

Investors pointed to recent supply agreements announced by Qualcomm with Microsoft and Meta Platforms, and to the partnership between OpenAI and Broadcom, as factors in a broader effort by large technology customers to diversify their AI hardware.

On Wednesday OpenAI and Broadcom introduced Jalapeño, a custom processor intended mainly for inference workloads — the computations that produce AI responses for services such as ChatGPT. The processor represents OpenAI’s first entry into developing its own AI silicon.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman described rapid development of the chip and credited the company’s models with speeding the process: “The degree to which our models have been able to accelerate it was very surprising to us.” He added the chip was designed end to end in about nine months.

Broadcom has been supplying custom AI infrastructure and has seen its shares rise about 10% so far this year and climb nearly sevenfold since the end of 2022.

Nvidia’s GPUs continue to be widely used for many AI training tasks. Several cloud providers and AI developers have announced plans to deploy Nvidia’s next-generation Vera Rubin platform in future data-center buildouts.

Market activity on Thursday reflected these developments: memory-chip names rose after Micron’s report, while Nvidia’s shares were pressured amid announcements about custom chips and supply agreements.