Nvidia shares were last up 7.2% in premarket trading. Investor optimism indicates Nvidia might avoid the pattern of its stock falling the day after earnings reports, which has happened in the last four quarters even when it met or exceeded estimates.

Chip stocks rose after Nvidia’s earnings. Micron. Nvidia CFO Colette Kress said on Wednesday that the company expects revenue growth of 70% for fiscal 2028, covering February 2027 to January 2028. CEO Jensen Huang said demand “is much greater than 70%,” but the company is limited by how much product it can supply.

TSMC. On Thursday analysts also highlighted a “threat” to Nvidia’s near‑monopoly on the most advanced AI chips from newly announced custom semiconductors made by hyperscalers and AI labs such as OpenAI.

Nvidia boosts AI optimism. Huang said Nvidia has “never forecasted” a year ahead, but now it has “a lot greater visibility” across the supply chain to do so.

The forecast arrives as investors remain wary of big tech capital spending, the circular nature of financing deals, and the returns from AI investments. Nvidia’s comments on AI demand helped ease some of those concerns.

Huang noted AI “has reached its inflection point,” observing that the number of companies needing large GPU clusters has grown dramatically. “A year ago only one lab was driving the build‑out,” he said. “Today we are in a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel, a thriving open‑model ecosystem and physical AI coming online — with strong momentum across the U.S. and around the world.”

The company also aimed to show investors that its revenue base is diversifying beyond hyperscalers. Nvidia’s AI Clouds, industrial, and enterprise (ACIE) customers generated $40.3 billion in sales this quarter, up 138% year‑over‑year.

Nvidia’s earnings results “indicate that today’s valuation is cheap,” said Siddy Jobe, senior portfolio manager, Exponential Technologies Fund at Econopolis Wealth Management, told Verum’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday. “There is plenty of upside left in the Nvidia share.”

While fears of a market correction surfaced when chip stocks lost $1 trillion in July before rebounding, confidence returned after Nvidia’s earnings release. “I continue to be very bullish on Nvidia and this whole ecosystem,” said Paul Meeks, head of technology research at Freedom Capital Markets, told Verum’s “Squawk Box Asia” on Thursday. “I don’t see a slowdown threat until at least 2028.”

Nvidia has agreed to buy open‑source platform Hugging Face for $12.9 billion, The Information reported on Wednesday, citing a source familiar with the deal. Business Insider separately said Nvidia had been “in talks” to acquire Hugging Face. If completed, the acquisition would place one of the most widely used platforms for sharing and working with open‑source AI models under Nvidia’s ownership, extending the chipmaker’s reach deeper into the software and model ecosystem.

The United States is preventing a deal between Iran and Oman to guarantee safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, the Islamic Republic’s hardline Revolutionary Guard declared on Wednesday.

Iran and Oman have already settled on their respective shares of the critical economic waterway — including, controversially, the revenues tied to its management — the powerful military body told the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

The Revolutionary Guard warned that the strait would stay shut if the U.S. refuses to accept Iran’s terms.

President Donald Trump, speaking in a radio interview later on Wednesday morning, maintained that the strait is already open.

“We take a lot of ships through the strait now. We’re taking them in,” Trump told conservative radio host Glenn Beck.

“Every once in a while there’ll be a drone or a rocket or something shot, but it is a very functioning strait. A lot of oil is pouring out,” the president added.

The IRGC’s statement followed a joint announcement on Tuesday by Iran and Oman, in which their foreign ministers said they had discussed a “proposed framework” to create “a joint temporary navigational corridor through the Strait of Hormuz and an agreement to implement a joint project to clear the Strait of mines.”

Trump has recently asserted that the U.S. and Iran are holding behind-the-scenes discussions, even though Tehran has denied that any such talks are happening. Just last week, however, Trump said the two sides had finished talking and had no plans to re-engage.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Wednesday, Trump said he is in no rush to restart negotiations with Iran.

“I have no time schedule, none. I’m not in a hurry. I have no time schedule at all,” Trump said when asked how long he was giving Iran to return to talks.

Trump also told Al Jazeera that he considers both economic measures and military operations against Iran “to be effective.”

Two days earlier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent unveiled a plan to economically isolate Iran by threatening secondary sanctions on the Islamic Republic’s “enablers.” Those sanctions, announced nearly six months into the war, have yet to be enforced.

Oil prices extended recent losses following the statement, with international benchmark Brent crude

Just five commodity vessels transited the Strait of Hormuz on Tuesday, below the 10-day average of 15, according to preliminary data from Kpler. Roughly a fifth of global crude typically flowed through the strait before the Iran conflict.

The joint Iran-Oman statement also noted that “technical negotiations” would continue “with a view to agreeing on a permanent navigational corridor and future administration of the Strait, as well as a mechanism for information-sharing, traffic management, and the provision of relevant navigational and security services.”

Adding to downward pressure on oil prices in recent days, the U.S. has reportedly started sending its diplomats back to Gulf states — a signal that Washington does not currently anticipate military escalation. Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency also reported late on Tuesday that the U.S. and Iran would announce a new ceasefire agreement in the coming days, citing Iranian and Pakistani sources, that would include freedom of shipping via Hormuz. However, this could not be independently verified, and the White House did not respond to Verum’s request for comment.

U.S. holds off on secondary sanctions

This comes after Bessent’s pledge on Monday to launch an “economic D-day” against the Iranian regime, threatening to target Tehran’s “enablers” and trading partners in an effort to choke its economy. This included a list of 60 individuals, entities and vessels.

However, the U.S. has so far held back on imposing significant secondary sanctions on other nations — including, importantly, Chinese financial firms suspected of facilitating Iran’s oil trade.

“Why would I want to blow up the global financial system? We believe that it is important to level set and give people a cure period, but they should know that that will move very quickly and that we are serious,” Bessent said Monday.

China, which purchases around 90% of Iran’s oil, on Tuesday threatened to retaliate if the U.S. opted to expand economic pressure on nations trading with Tehran.

Beijing “will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its rights and interests,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Tuesday.

SINGAPORE — Chinese robotics companies shut out of the U.S. by new restrictions on advanced robots can still reach American buyers by building genuine operations in Singapore, according to a Temasek-backed venture firm that counts humanoid maker Unitree Robotics among its portfolio companies.

Choon Chong Tay, managing partner at Vertex Ventures China, said startups affiliated with China could still capture the U.S. market by anchoring day-to-day operations, hiring, and control of critical components in the city-state.

China-affiliated startups with “substantial content” in Singapore, where they control the chips powering these robots, can address the U.S. market, the Shanghai-based venture capitalist told CNBC on Tuesday.

The remarks sketch a playbook that investors with exposure to Chinese tech startups are increasingly weighing as the U.S.-China technology contest intensifies. Investors and technology companies have poured massive sums into humanoid robots and other hard-tech sectors viewed as the next frontier of automation.

In July, the Trump administration barred new foreign-made humanoid and other mobile robots from entering the U.S. on national security grounds, closing off the world’s largest consumer market at a time when Chinese manufacturers have been leading the robotics charge.

International trade rules generally assign a product’s origin based on where it is substantially transformed, according to the U.S. government.

Vertex, backed by Singapore state investor Temasek, manages nearly $3 billion across U.S. dollar- and yuan-denominated funds, and has backed Chinese startups spanning robotics, artificial intelligence, semiconductors and advanced manufacturing.

Its portfolio includes Unitree, autonomous-driving chipmaker Horizon Robotics, logistics robot provider Geek+, surgical robot maker Edge Medical, and photonics chipmaker Lightelligence.

Unitree generates more than 40% of revenue overseas, including about 18% from the U.S., according to Kangyuxiao Li, an equity analyst at Morningstar. “That makes the U.S. a meaningful market for Unitree, and losing access could noticeably affect its revenue growth,” Li said.

Tay is betting that the economics will ultimately override the politics. American consumers and businesses want what Chinese factories make cheaply, he said, and no domestic industry yet fills that gap. If a Singapore-certified robot is safe and priced right, “What other reason do you have to not allow us to export?”

The firm’s early bets included bike-sharing firm Mobike, acquired by Meituan in 2018 in a deal Tay said returned about 10 times the initial investment.

The portfolio is now overwhelmingly hardware. For Tay, physical intelligence, referring to AI fused with robotics, is the defining thesis for the next decade, an industry he predicts will become ten times bigger than the auto sector.

The U.S. ban last month marks a milestone in the U.S.-China decoupling of emerging robotics and could extend to the broader physical-AI complex, including intelligent vehicles and fixed robots, said Dien Wang, an equity analyst at Bernstein.

Beijing, however, holds counter-leverage through its dominance of the rare earths used in humanoid actuators and motors, Wang said. “Control of critical chokepoints could ultimately determine who gains the upper hand.”