Nvidia takes back control of the AI trade as Big Tech nears record highs

By Christine Ji

The Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF is closing in on its May peak - this time thanks to Nvidia

Shares of Nvidia have outperformed a major semiconductor index over the past three months.

Big Tech names are once again creeping toward all-time highs - but different winners are driving the rally this time.

After spending the earlier part of 2026 in the shadows of smaller highflying semiconductor stocks, Nvidia (NVDA) is re-establishing itself as the king of the artificial-intelligence trade.

On Thursday, the Roundhill Magnificent Seven ETF MAGS rose nearly 3% to $70.63, nearing its all-time closing high of $70.94. The ETF - which tracks the performance of Nvidia, Apple (AAPL), Meta Platforms (META), Amazon.com (AMZN), Alphabet (GOOGL) (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT) and Tesla (TSLA) - previously peaked in May.

Performance among that "Magnificent Seven" group has been diverging in recent months. Among the seven constituents, Nvidia and Apple are the closest to their peaks, both sitting within 3% of their record highs. Alphabet, Meta and Tesla, meanwhile, are each down double digits from their all-time highs.

Shares of Nvidia have picked up momentum recently following a strong earnings report last week, in which the company shared that it expects to grow revenue by over 70% for the fiscal year ending in January 2028.

The results showed that "there is still no end in sight to the AI infrastructure build-out," Joe Tigay, portfolio manager at Equity Armor Investments, wrote in a note last week.

And on Thursday, Nvidia announced its acquisition of Hugging Face, a popular open-source AI developer platform. The deal will help deepen Nvidia's AI ecosystem by giving the chip giant more control and visibility into the open-source software layer, Jeff Pollard, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, said in a Thursday note.

Nvidia's market leadership marks a reversal from earlier this year, when the company was left in the dust as semiconductor stocks like Micron Technology (MU) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) powered the iShares Semiconductor ETF SOXX to all-time highs. Some analysts speculated at the time that Nvidia had grown too large and that investors were looking for differentiated semiconductor plays.

The SOXX ETF is up 67% this year, but the overall semiconductor industry has underperformed Nvidia recently as investors have readjusted expectations for some fast-growing chip stocks. Over the past three months, shares of Nvidia have risen 7%, while the SOXX ETF has fallen 18%.

-Christine Ji

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09-03-26 1712ET