NextFin News - Shares of Nvidia (NVDA) faced significant downward pressure on Monday, February 9, 2026, as the market reacted to reports that a highly anticipated $100 billion infrastructure partnership with OpenAI has been placed on hold. The stock slid 3.4% to close at $174.19, extending a five-day decline that has seen the semiconductor giant lose nearly 9% of its value. The sell-off was triggered by a report from The Wall Street Journal suggesting that U.S. President Trump’s administration’s recent shifts in export controls and internal strategic disagreements between the two AI titans have delayed the binding agreement.
The news comes at a critical juncture for Nvidia, which is scheduled to report its quarterly earnings on February 25. While the immediate reaction was negative, the underlying narrative remains complex. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman took to social media to quell the "insanity," reaffirming that Nvidia makes the "best AI chips in the world" and expressing a desire for a long-term partnership. Simultaneously, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed reports of a rift as "nonsense," confirming that the company intends to participate in OpenAI’s next funding round, which could be the largest private capital raise in history.
The current volatility stems from a shift in how investors perceive the "AI moat." For much of 2025, the market assumed a linear growth trajectory fueled by massive, multi-year contracts. However, the stalling of the $100 billion deal highlights a growing trend of diversification among AI labs. According to Barchart, OpenAI has recently committed over $10 billion to alternative hardware providers, including Broadcom and AMD, seeking specialized chips with larger Static Random-Access Memory (SRAM) to improve inference speeds for products like Codex.
Despite these headwinds, financial analysts at Goldman Sachs have reiterated a 'Buy' rating with a price target of $250. Analyst James Schneider noted that while the OpenAI deal's delay creates a visibility gap, the broader demand from "hyperscalers" remains robust. Alphabet recently signaled a massive increase in capital expenditure, projecting spending between $175 billion and $185 billion for 2026, a significant portion of which is earmarked for Nvidia-powered data centers. This suggests that even if one major customer pivots, the aggregate demand for high-performance computing continues to outpace supply.
From a technical perspective, the stock's slip below its 50-day moving average of $183.78 indicates a period of consolidation. However, the fundamental metrics remain elite. Nvidia continues to maintain gross margins near 70% and a net margin of 53%. The transition from the "DeepSeek shock" of early 2025 to the current "reasoning model" era has actually increased the compute intensity required for each user query. As OpenAI and Anthropic move toward "AI agents" in 2026—tools capable of automating complex software development over several hours—the per-user demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell architecture is expected to rise exponentially.
Looking forward, the relationship between Nvidia and OpenAI is likely to evolve from a simple vendor-customer dynamic into a strategic co-dependency. Huang’s intention to join OpenAI’s IPO plans suggests that Nvidia is willing to use its massive cash reserves to secure its position as the primary infrastructure provider. While the $100 billion deal may be "on ice" in its original form, the necessity for OpenAI to access Nvidia’s next-generation accelerators to remain competitive against Chinese firms like Alibaba and Bytedance remains the primary driver of long-term value. Investors should watch the February 25 earnings call for specific commentary on data center backlogs, which will serve as the ultimate barometer for whether the current slip is a buying opportunity or a sign of a broader cooling in the AI infrastructure boom.
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