Nvidia moves closer to a $5 trillion valuation. Here's what's driving its momentum.

By Britney Nguyen

Nvidia is growing its networking ambitions and currying favor in Washington, D.C.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is delivering a keynote at the GTC event in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.

Nvidia Corp. Chief Executive Jensen Huang has become a familiar face in Washington, D.C., this year as his company finds itself at the center of the Trump administration's trade war with China.

And for the first time on Tuesday, Huang delivered a keynote at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference, known as GTC, in the nation's capital, highlighting the deepening relationship between the world's leading chip maker and the U.S. government.

Huang emphasized the importance of building artificial-intelligence infrastructure in the U.S. and having the rest of the world build on the U.S. tech stack throughout his talk.

Manufacturing for Nvidia's (NVDA) Blackwell AI platform is now in full production in Arizona, Huang said. Earlier this month, the company said it and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TW:2330) had produced the first Blackwell wafer - the semiconductor material that chips are etched on - in the U.S. at the Taiwanese chip maker's fabrication facility in Phoenix.

Most of Nvidia's advanced chips are manufactured in Taiwan. Going into 2026, Huang said during the keynote that Nvidia has visibility into more than $500 billion in cumulative revenue from Blackwell and its next-generation Vera Rubin platform over the next five quarters, not counting business in China.

"The first thing that President Trump asked me for is [to] bring manufacturing back," Huang said during his keynote. "Bring manufacturing back because it's necessary for national security. Bring manufacturing back because we want the jobs."

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he plans to meet with Huang on Wednesday.

Nvidia closed with a record-high market capitalization of $4.885 trillion on Tuesday, according to Dow Jones Market Data. The company's stock reached an all-time closing high, up 4.98% at $201.03 per share, and needs to close at $205.76 to reach the $5 trillion mark for the first time, based on the data. Up 11.51% over the past four sessions, Nvidia's stock is on its best four-day run since May 15, the data showed.

Shares of Nokia Corp. (FI:NOKIA) jumped more than 20% after Nvidia said it would take a $1 billion stake in the company and named it as a partner for its commercial-grade AI-RAN products, which will allow Nokia and other telecommunications companies to roll out AI-native 5G-Advanced and 6G networks through Nvidia's platform. The chip maker unveiled its Aerial RAN Computer Pro accelerated computing platform to help telecommunications providers make the transition to 6G.

"The partnership highlights the growing convergence between telecom infrastructure and AI-driven networking, as vendors look to align traditional network equipment with AI and cloud workloads," Evercore ISI analyst Amit Daryanani said in a note to clients.

See more: Nokia's stock is getting a big Nvidia bump. Why the chip maker is taking a stake.

"If we can partner, we could build on top of this incredible new technology, fundamentally based on top of accelerated computing and AI, and for the United States - for America - to be at the center of the next revolution in 6G," Huang said during his keynote.

Huang also introduced the company's NVQLink interconnect technology to connect quantum processing units to Nvidia's graphics processing units for running quantum computer control, calibration and error-correction.

The system is scalable, Huang said, meaning as quantum companies scale up from using hundreds of qubits today, it can handle error-correction for hundreds of thousands of qubits in the future. He added that companies will be able to go beyond error-correction and run quantum GPU applications via quantum devices and AI supercomputers. Nvidia is partnering with 17 QPU companies to produce hardware for NVQLink.

See more: How quantum computing could become the next frontier in national security

Nvidia's Washington event comes as Huang has made efforts to work with the Trump administration to keep up the chip maker's business in China, as well as be at the forefront of the boost in U.S. manufacturing. Huang reportedly said that Nvidia was hosting its fourth GTC D.C. in hopes that Trump, who is currently traveling in Asia, would attend, according to CNBC's "Money Movers."

In April, Trump effectively banned the sale of Nvidia's specially designed H20 chips to China through new export-license requirements. Nvidia said it took a $4.5 billion charge in the April quarter due to the policy move.

After months of pushback on the decision from Huang and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD), which was also affected by the ban, the Trump administration said it would grant the necessary export licenses to the companies to sell in China again in exchange for a 15% cut of the revenue from those sales, which would go to the U.S. government.

See more: Nvidia and AMD reportedly strike deals with Trump - but analysts see a 'slippery slope'

In its fiscal second-quarter earnings report in late August, Nvidia said it didn't make any H20 sales to China-based customers in the quarter but that it did benefit from a release of previously reserved inventory of the chips, which amounted to $180 million.

On the company's earnings call, Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said the company is advocating for the approval of its Blackwell platform for sales in China. Nvidia reportedly has an upcoming B30 chip based on the Blackwell architecture for the Chinese market. However, under the updated export controls, the chip is not expected to be as powerful as the H20. The company said its chips "are designed and sold for beneficial commercial use" and that "every licensed sale" would be a benefit to both U.S. leadership and the economy.

Nvidia didn't include H20 revenue in its outlook for the fiscal third quarter, but Kress said the company could do between $2 billion to $5 billion in H20 revenue in the current quarter if tensions between the U.S. and China subside. At the time, Kress said the U.S. government had not yet "published a regulation codifying" a revenue-sharing requirement.

Read: Nvidia's Jensen Huang seems to disagree with Trump on this big AI topic

Huang and Trump seemingly do not share a similar view on China's position in its AI race with the United States. Earlier this month, Huang said during an appearance on CNBC's "Squawk Box" that the U.S. is "not far ahead" of China in AI development - in contrast to comments made earlier that week by Trump, who said that the U.S. is "beating everybody with AI at levels that nobody ever thought even possible."

Trump told reporters that the U.S. is "No. 1 now with AI," partly due to his policies allowing AI infrastructure builders "to build their own power" to support the technology's massive electricity needs.

Huang said on "Squawk Box" that he was "so happy" about the Trump administration's "energy-growth" stance aimed at boosting the country's AI efforts. When examining the full AI tech stack, Huang said China is "way ahead" of the U.S. on energy, while the U.S. leads with semiconductors. Huang added that China's open-source AI models, which are available for developers to build with, "are well ahead of us."

Huang reiterated his support of Trump's pro-energy policies during his GTC keynote.

Nvidia faces challenges to its China business not only from the Trump administration, but from the Chinese government as well.

In September, China's State Administration for Market Regulation said that after a preliminary investigation, it found that Nvidia had breached antitrust rules when it acquired networking-technology company Mellanox in a deal that closed in April 2020.

And despite a reversal of Trump's ban on selling its chips in China, Chinese officials have reportedly discouraged homegrown tech companies from using Nvidia's chips over security concerns.

-Britney Nguyen

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(END) Dow Jones Newswires

10-28-25 1638ET