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Software’s death is greatly exaggerated, says Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
Not many had a bear market for software stocks on their bingo card for 2026. It has been pervasive, from massive tech companies including Microsoft (MSFT) and SAP (SAP) to smaller ones, such as DocuSign (DOCU) and LegalZoom (LZ). Some on Wall Street have called this the “SaaSpocalypse.”
The catalyst for the sell-off came last month, when Anthropic released Claude Cowork, a sophisticated agentic AI system. It allows for developing sophisticated agents without needing to know how to code.
But interestingly enough, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang thinks that Wall Street is overreacting. At a recent conference, he noted that “there’s this notion that the software industry is in decline and will be replaced by AI. It is the most illogical thing in the world.”
No doubt, Huang has a pretty good track record when it comes to understanding industry trends.
Yet agentic AI is still likely to result in major changes – and this can be a threat to those software companies that fail to innovate.
“The narrative that AI agents will replace SaaS misses what is actually happening inside companies,” says Branden Jenkins, CEO of MAXIO, a developer of an AI-powered subscription platform. “This is not an extinction event. It is a structural shift. Organizations are consolidating tools, scrutinizing spend, and demanding clearer paths to profitability. Every system now has to prove its value.”
– Tom Taulli
Morgan Stanley analyst expects “strong results” for Nvidia
Morgan Stanley analyst Joseph Moore says he anticipates “strong results” for Nvidia’s upcoming print.
“We expect Nvidia to trade up on good results, with a clear acceleration in near-term drivers, an impactful and accelerating Vera Rubin ramp, and long-term confidence,” Moore writes in a February 23 note to clients.
Last quarter, Nvidia reported revenue that was $3 billion more than what Wall Street expected and the company forecast an $8 billion quarter-over-quarter increase to its top line for Q4. Moore says “it does not feel like there’s been a deceleration,” and he believes the company will beat both its guidance and the Street’s forecast.
Moore also thinks a strong ramp in Nvidia’s Vera Rubin next-generation, six-chip AI platform will help mitigate any worries over weakness in the share price. He anticipates a strong outperformance from the blue chip stock going forward, as evidenced by his $250 price target, which is more than 30% above current levels.
He adds that “we would be buyers of Nvidia stock into this report.”
– Karee Venema
Does Nvidia pay a dividend?
Nvidia pays a small quarterly dividend of 1 cent per share, which works out to 4 cents per share annually.
Based on the chipmaker’s current stock price, this works out to a dividend yield of 0.02%. By comparison, the S&P 500’s current dividend yield is 1.1%.
In fiscal 2025, Nvidia paid roughly $834 billion in dividends. It also bought back $33.7 billion in stock.
– Karee Venema
Related: The Kiplinger Dividend 15: Our Favorite Dividend-Paying Stocks
On February 17, Meta Platforms (META) and Nvidia announced a major expansion of their partnership. Under the new multi-year agreement, Meta will purchase millions of Nvidia’s latest chips, including Blackwell and Rubin GPUs, along with CPUs, networking and security technologies.
Meta has already invested billions in data centers, large language models (LLMs) and AI-driven features for both users and advertisers. This deal strengthens that strategy by ensuring access to the high-performance compute needed to train and run increasingly complex models at scale. The chips will be deployed across Meta’s own data centers and supplemented through Nvidia’s Cloud Partner ecosystem. This includes providers such as CoreWeave (CRWV) and Crusoe.
Beyond performance, Meta also plans to use Nvidia’s Confidential Computing capabilities in services such as WhatsApp. This highlights the growing importance of trust, security and governance.
The agreement, likely valued in the tens of billions, reinforces Nvidia’s leadership in AI processors at a time when competitors such as Google’s TPUs and Amazon’s Trainium are gaining attention. Yet Nvidia’s GPUs remain the most flexible option across diverse AI workloads, providing the company a durable competitive edge.
The partnership makes one thing clear: access to advanced compute is becoming the defining advantage in the AI era.
– Tom Taulli
Tom Taulli
Tom Taulli has been developing software since the 1980s. He sold his applications to a variety of publications. In college, he started his first company, which focused on the development of e-learning systems. He would go on to create other companies as well, including Hypermart.net that was sold to InfoSpace in 1996. Along the way, Tom has written columns for online publications such as Bloomberg, Forbes, Barron’s and Kiplinger. He has also written a variety of books, including Artificial Intelligence Basics: A Non-Technical Introduction.
What time is Nvidia’s earnings release?
Nvidia will release its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings report after the stock market closes on Wednesday, February 25. The results typically come through around 4:20 pm to 4:30 pm Eastern Standard Time.
The release of Nvidia’s earnings report will be followed by a conference call, which will begin at 5 pm EST.
Wall Street keeps raising Nvidia earnings estimates
“Earnings expectations for Nvidia are exploding,” says John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds.
Indeed, analysts have upwardly revised their earnings-per-share estimates for Nvidia’s Q4 print three times in the past 30 days.
Belton adds that Wall Street “has become accustomed to very consistent beats and guides above the street,” and that “part of the reason for the consistency is that the demand is so high that they’re supply constrained, which remains the case.”
The portfolio manager believes we “could get a big beat” this time around, but what Wall Street really wants to hear is the chipmaker’s guidance beyond this quarter. Specifically, “what is the demand outlook into next year and how long is this cycle going to last,” as well as “how high this cycle is going to go.”
Belton also suspects the Street will be looking for commentary from Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on agentic software development. “I think we’re going to hear a lot more there, given what Anthropic has recently been releasing. But that seems to be the next new multi-billion-dollar use case for AI.”
– Karee Venema
Karee Venema
With over a decade of experience writing about the stock market, Karee Venema is the senior investing editor at Kiplinger.com. She joined the publication in April 2021, and oversees a wide range of investing coverage, including content focused on equities, fixed income, mutual funds, ETFs, macroeconomics and more.
Nvidia stock trades higher to start earnings week
Nvidia stock opened higher Monday morning, up 1% at last check. The positive price action comes after Aletheia Capital upgraded the chip stock to Buy from Hold, saying it is “too cheap to ignore.” NVDA is up more than 1% for the month to date, and has gained nearly 4% since the start of the year.
This comes as the broader stock market trades lower at the start of the week amid uncertainty over President Donald Trump’s tariff plans, with the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average down 0.8%, the broader S&P 500 0.4% lower and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite off 0.5%.
