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Currently up 34%, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock is on course to deliver market-beating results again this year, powered higher by very strong earnings growth.
Yet it’s also been a strange year, with rising concerns about an AI bubble and the price is down 12.5% since October.
I rebought Nvidia back in April when President Trump’s bombshell tariffs announcement sent it crashing to just $95. At that price, I thought it offered a lot of value and, thankfully, it’s now up at $181.
But what can investors like myself expect to see in 2026? Let’s take a look.
Ready for volatility
The first thing to say is that I’m bracing for more volatility from this stock. This is nothing new, though, as Nvidia has a habit of whipsawing up and down from one month to the next.
Also, as AI data centre infrastructure spending grows, I’m expecting fears about overspending to intensify. As such, we’ll probably see more news from cloud giants — the hyperscalers — about developing their own chips to reduce costs.
It’s possible then, with rising competition and AI bubble fears, that investors get antsy and that the stock doesn’t perform as well next year.
Vera and Rubin
At the same time, I also see two potential catalysts that might support another year of strong share price gains.
First off, there’s Nvidia’s upcoming Vera Rubin platform, which is on track to ramp in the second half of 2026 and be available by year-end. This combines Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs, supporting unprecedented next-generation AI workloads.
For example, the Rubin CPX GPU is purpose-built to handle million-token coding and generative AI video applications. It will also allow for a proliferation of autonomous AI agents.
The Vera Rubin platform will mark another leap in the frontier of AI computing…Rubin CPX is the first CUDA GPU purpose-built for massive-context AI, where models reason across millions of tokens of knowledge at once.
Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.
In other words, AI technology is close to a significant upgrade, powered by Nvidia’s incredible products and innovation.
H200 chips
On top of this, there should be renewed sales activity in China after the US government allowed Nvidia to sell its Taiwan-manufactured H200 AI chips there.
According to Reuters, Nvidia is considering adding production capacity after orders came flooding straight in. Apparently tech giants like Alibaba and TikTok owner ByteDance — which, like their American counterparts, are also racing to build out AI infrastructure and products — have been in touch about large orders.
Reading this suggests that Chinese authorities have relaxed their bans on domestic firms buying US technology. So this should be a positive for sales in 2026 (though it should be noted the US government is taking a 25% cut on these chips).
Not overvalued
Finally, there’s the fact that the stock doesn’t look overvalued. Based on forecasts for FY27, starting in February, it’s trading at 26 times forward earnings.
At this valuation, I think Nvidia is worth considering for those wanting to invest in the AI revolution. But they should buckle up for some wild swings.
