Nvidia Stock Slips as Vera CPUs, Taiwan Spend Raise Questions

Nvidia shares fell 0.12% to $212.35 on Thursday, underperforming the S&P 500 and Nasdaq, which each rose about 1.5% that day. Through Wednesday’s close, Nvidia was up roughly 14% in 2026, trailing the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index’s roughly 79% gain.

Analysts note Nvidia’s large market capitalization and broad ownership have limited the stock’s ability to post outsized gains even after strong results.

Investors are focused on whether AI workloads will continue to favor graphics processing units, which helped Nvidia build its lead, or shift toward a mix of processors including central processing units and custom AI chips. Nvidia has introduced Vera, a family of stand-alone CPUs for AI data centers. The company estimates Vera could generate as much as $20 billion in revenue this year and is targeting a total addressable market near $200 billion.

Early benchmark tests run at Nvidia’s Santa Clara facilities and assessed by third-party firms showed Vera performing well on the workloads Nvidia is prioritizing, though broader commercial comparisons are pending. Oppenheimer analyst Rick Schafer wrote in a research note: “While the tests were curated by Nvidia at its Santa Clara headquarters, the early data from those tests indicate that Vera is highly competitive compared with AMD’s EPYC and Intel Xeon offerings, at least in the workloads Nvidia is targeting with the chip.” Full performance comparisons are expected once Vera units ship to partners and customers.

At an event in Taipei tied to the opening of Nvidia’s new campus, CEO Jensen Huang announced plans to increase annual spending with Taiwanese suppliers to about $150 billion, up from roughly $100 billion now and from about $10 billion to $15 billion five years ago. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. remains a key manufacturing partner for advanced chips.

Investors are watching whether Vera gains traction with data-center customers, how the chips perform in real-world deployments, and how competitors respond with CPUs and custom AI designs. They are also weighing supply-chain and geopolitical risks tied to concentrated manufacturing in Taiwan.