Prof G Markets - Nvidia Says $1T Is Coming — The Market Isn’t Buying It

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Ed Elson speaks with Gil Luria about the biggest news out of Nvidia’s GTC conference and checks in on the company’s valuation. Then, he is joined by Alice Han to discuss China’s role in the War with Iran. Finally, Ed gives an update on how the war is impacting inflation in America.  Check out our latest Prof G Markets newsletter Follow Prof G Markets on Instagram Follow Ed on Instagram, X and Substack Follow Scott on InstagramSend us your questions or comments by emailing [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Money markets met. If money is evil, then that building is held. The show goes up. Watch the sell, sell. Welcome to Profi Markets. I'm Ed Elson. It is March 18th. Let's check in on yesterday's Market Vitals.

The major indices posted modest gains. The price of oil climbed higher as President Trump slammed allies for not helping him fight the war in Iran and reopen the strait of Hormuz. And finally, bond yield. fell ahead of the Federal Reserve's interest rate decision due later today. Okay, what else is happening? Nvidia expects at least $1 trillion in revenue from Blackwell and Ruben chips through 2007. That is the headline news out of the company's GTC conference, also known as the Super Bowl

of AI, which kicked off this week. In his keynote on Monday, CEO Jensen Huang pitched a future where Nvidia powers not just chatbots and data centers, but also robots, factories and autonomous machines in the physical world. Nvidia's stock is up nearly 1.5% since his speech. Lots more to unpack from this conference. So here to discuss all of it. I'm speaking with our friend Gil Luria, head of technology research at DA Davidson.

Gil, good to have you on the show. I think we have to start with this $1 trillion number that is making all the headlines, one trillion in chip sales through 2027. That's what Jensen Huang believes. Give us your views on that number. Is that a real number or is that just a headline? No, it's a real number.

What's really surprising is that investors shrugged it off as unimpressive. It really added a half a trillion dollars of revenue in really in a year. And you would think investors would jump all over that, considering it implies, upside to next calendar year's numbers for Nvidia, and yet investors shrugged it off, which tells us something really interesting. Investors don't believe the great data center buildout will continue into next year. The market is now telling us that it's expecting

2026 to be the peak year in the data center buildout. Now, that's indicating a little bit of split personality for the market because as you discussed and we've discussed, the market is also saying mass unemployment is coming, software companies are worthless, so AI is going to happen, it's going to have a huge transformational effect, and yet at the same time, the market's not believing that the great data center build out will continue into next year. So somewhere along there, there's an inconsistency. I guess something that I would empathize with the market's reaction here, I mean, when we hear Elon Musk, for example, talk about optimist robots and sort of talk about these big numbers in the future. He'll often say something like, I think this is going to generate trillions of dollars worth of revenue.

And he seems to sort of just say it on the fly. He said similar things about robotaxis as well. And then it never materialized, or if it did, it materialized in a much more insignificant way than a lot of people expected. And I guess the question remains here for Jensen Huang, too. I mean, why is this one real when it seems to be also a little bit of a projection out into the future? Why is it something that we should really be taking seriously? That's a fair question, because these numbers are fantastical. So we do have to always be skeptical when people give us fantastical numbers like that.

But to be fair, two different people. Elon Musk has a long, illustrious track record of over-promising and compressing, pressing timelines, even when he knows it's going to take a lot longer. Even though he usually delivers on the promises eventually, the timeline gets extended a lot. Right. Jensen Wong has actually been pretty consistent. He's actually been cautious not to guide too far into the future up until just six months ago. InVito was only guiding one quarter at a time.

Six months ago, he took a departure to say, you know, I think there's going to be half a trillion dollars of black Blackwell and Rubin by the end of 26 or in the next 18 months, which is slightly past 26. And he pointed to that and said, look, here I am. Five months later, I'm telling you that number's too low. I need to take that to a trillion dollars if I extend it to 2027. So he's being thoughtful, and he, at least in the way he's communicated and clarified that statement, feels like he's under-promising. He clarified this doesn't include CPUs or the grok chips or the networking equipment or Rubin Ultra. So he actually said it's more than a trillion. So from his perspective, this is a number that he has high visibility into because he has these orders from his largest customers, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, meta, etc.

So he feels like that's actually underpromising, which is probably why he's a little surprised by the underreaction to such a high. So I guess what then do we make of the fact that the market doesn't seem to be so hyped about the next couple of years in data center build out? Why do investors believe this? Why do they, it seems like you're saying, think that we've kind of reached peak data center? Well, I don't think we've reached peak data center. I'm saying the evaluations for these stock imply that. And it's not an unreasonable thing to say, look, these big companies are. are investing hundreds of billions of dollars, they do not yet have the revenue and the returns to justify that.

Until we see those returns come in, we're going to be skeptical about these companies continuing to invest in these rates because these companies are using all their cash flow and then some to build that data center. So they can't keep doing this forever. So we, the investors, the market as a collective, his view is, let's wait until we see the returns come in a little better, then we'll be able to make that leap of faith that the data center construction is going to continue with these rates.

It is our opinion, it is my opinion, that we will get these returns, that the growth rates we're seeing at open AI and anthropic and in usage of AI by consumers and enterprises is so significant, and the technology is still developing that we will actually need a lot more data centers. but the skepticism is always warranted. It just creates opportunities for investments. Right. One of the big themes in his keynote was physical AI,

so robots, factories, autonomous systems, etc. Does that play a big role in your view on how this AI buildout will unfold? Are you thinking about physical AI? Was that story compelling to you? It's compelling, but the timeline is different. You pointed earlier to Elon Musk and his promises about optimists and rolling millions of optimises into every home. And we know that's a few years away. I would think of that as extending the AI cycle, right?

If the AI cycle is about increasing productivity of white-collar workers, physical AI and robotics, are about extending the productivity of blue-collar workers. For those of you that didn't see the keynote, they even animated Olaf from Frozen. and had him come on stage to talk to Jensen Wong. And so it is coming, and we've seen some demos of Optimus and figure robots, etc. We just know that that's several years out. So that's probably behind the big AI wave. We're going to have a big humanoid robot wave that'll help automate the other types of jobs

from white-collar jobs to blue-collar jobs. What would you say was the single most important takeaway from GTC so far? the incorporation of the grok technology that Nvidia acquired. So if we've been talking about Broadcom and AMD trying to catch up to Nvidia, AMD has a new generation of GPUs, some custom GPUs they're doing for meta for open AI. Broadcom does the A6, which is custom accelerator chips that they do for other large companies like Google, et cetera.

And those companies appeared to be catching up to Nvidia. By incorporating GROC technology into their data center systems, Nvidia is extending its lead from those companies. They're talking about the fact that they can generate more tokens faster and cheaper than any of those alternatives, and it was very important for them to bring the GROC technology in in order to accomplish that. So it's Nvidia extending its lead over the competition

and making the argument that the total cost of ownership even for inference is lower with Nvidia systems and the key to that was adding the GROC technology. One other thing that has struck me about this conference is just how big it is. People are going at Super Bowl of AI, Woodstock of AI. I mean, you see these images of these gigantic crowds,

literally filling out a stadium. I saw someone online saying that Jensid Wang is the Taylor Swift of men, which I think is weirdly actually not that inaccurate. That's right. What do you make of just how big of an event this has become? And I guess the stardom of Jensen Huang in 26. What does that say about society and where we are as a market right now? Yeah, this is the big event of the year for AI. And it's not a coincidence. Jensen Wong foresaw the future of AI before anybody else did, right? He was meeting Sam Altman in

2017 to give him chip. So he saw this coming. He's anticipated several steps forward. So this is really well deserved in the sense that he is very much an invidia is very much responsible for the AI revolution. And it's not a coincidence that they also capture most of the profit dollars in AI and will continue to do so for a while. So it's his vision that has been responsible for a lot of the progress. It's made NVIDIAGTC, the main event for AI right now. And that's why it's such a big celebration. And plus, he has the iconic black leather jacket. That always

helps that you have something like that. It looks pretty good. I think we need to get one ourselves. Final question, $181 a share. That is what NVIDIA stock is trading it right now. What do you make of the valuation over at D.A. Davidson? It's very attractive. That's a market multiple. So they're trading a 21 times earn. on a number that's probably too low.

A market multiple for a company that's going to grow more than 50% this year and probably more than 30% this year. That's a lot more than market growth. So as long as you believe that we're going to continue to need more AI and build more data centers next year, and Vida is probably the most attractive mega cap out there. All right. Gil Luria, D.A. Davidson.

Gell, always appreciate your time. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Off to the break. China's role in the Iran war. For even more market's insights, you can subscribe to my weekly newsletter Simply Put at simplyput.profjimedia.com.

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I'll never work again if anyone found out. My lips are sealed. Marvel Television's Wonder Man. All eight episodes now streaming, only on Disney Plus. We're back with Profti Markets. Trump is pressuring China to help him win the Iran War. On Monday, Trump asked to push his planned summit with Xi Jinping, back by, quote, a month or so. The meeting was set for March 31st and would have been the first

US presidential visit to China since 2017. This delay is widely seen as a tactic to push China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. And China is uniquely positioned to help do that. It buys roughly 91% of Iran's oil exports, making it the only country with real financial leverage over Iran. So here to help us unpack. China's involvement in the Iran War. We're speaking with Alice Hahn, director at Greenmantle and co-host of the China Decode podcast. Alice, thank you for joining us. I want to ask you about China's role in all of this, but we should probably start with Trump. Maybe trying to send a message to China, trying to get them to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Is that the message he's sending? And can they

do that? Can they really make it happen? Well, thanks for having me back on the show, Ed. interesting stuff. We've got a collision of what's happening on the U.S.-China front with what's happening in Iran. So let me take it sequentially. I would say what Trump is trying to do is soft requesting the Chinese to help out, not just the Chinese, by the way, the Europeans, other actors in the region as well, because he clearly doesn't feel that he can do this alone. Now, my own sense, and this is a sense amongst my colleagues here at my firm, is that there actually is a growing risk of boots on the ground of a U.S. operation to eliminate Iranian miners that are posing a risk to the Strait of Hormuz. That could happen. But certainly, I think in

the weeks leading up to the current moment, there has been this sort of soft signaling from Washington that they would like to have the Chinese come in and contribute, collaborate in the way that the Soviets did with the Americans back in the 80s during the Iraq-Iran war. But what is clear to me and what was clear from the readout of Wang Yi, the Chinese foreign minister's press conference back on March 8 during the two sessions, is that China doesn't want to get involved. Wang Yi made it very clear that China is abiding by the quote-unquote five principles of peace and stability and non-interference in foreign affairs. What that means concretely is that the Chinese are playing a wait-and-see game. They are not directly

aiding the Iranians as of yet insofar as I understand, but they are so not willing to commit convoys or collaborate with the Americans to really securitize the Strait of Hormuz. And last but not least, I would say that they, I think, benefit in the short term, or even the medium term if this becomes a more prolonged conflict from the U.S. being bogged down in the Middle East, you know, moving away from the Indo-Pacific as its core area of a strategic concern. And really, I think the Chinese believe that this could in the short, medium term, push the Gulf countries, which I think already is doing, closer towards Beijing, because the Gulf countries are very upset with what has been happening in terms of the U.S. and Israelis

mismanagement from their perspective of the Iran issue. It seems like leverage and power is really the big question here. And based on what Trump is doing, this sort of soft ask, as you put it, it seems to suggest that China has the power to make things okay in the Strait of Hormuz, because they buy so much of Iran's oil. At the same time, I also know that China depends on Iran for a lot of the oil that they import to their own nations. So in a lot of ways, maybe they don't have the leverage there. Maybe they actually need Iran in a lot of ways, too. So I guess give us the lay of the land when it comes to power and leverage? Who is the real power player from a geopolitical perspective when it comes to the Iran

war right now? Well, I think about it from a national security framework of capabilities and intentions. Your first point, Ed, is do they have the power and the leverage of Iran? 100%. Yes. They have bought just over 90% of all Iranian oil exports. China imports around 15% of its oil prior to this from Iran. So this is an asymmetric relationship. in which the Iranians are highly reliant, this is, you know, because of sanctions on Chinese demand, Chinese imports. And by the way, over the last four decades, the CCP, Beijing has had really close strategic ties with the Islamic Republic

because they see them as a key asset in the region and giving them an advantage in the Middle East. But does China have the intent to really get involved? And this is where I'm skeptical. They could, in theory, say to the Iranians, hey, you should stop mining, putting miners in the region to obstruct trade. That may be on the table at some later date and some kind of diplomatic peace process. But right now, I think China is in the advantage seat, primarily because from what I'm hearing in the Gulf region, Iran will probably put China at the top of the list as it starts to open up the straight.

And already we see indications in the last day or so that there are tankers that are coming from India, Pakistan, one that's Guyana flagged, but going ultimately to China. This suggests to me that the pattern moving forward from the Iranians will be tanker by tanker, case by case, they will decide based on what they consider to be friendly regimes. And what is clear to me, given the relationship over the last four decades, is that China will probably be the top of the list in terms of preferential treatment in terms of access through the straight, that immediately reduces China's strategic incentive to help the Americans, because if they can still get access to the straight, why would they want to help the Americans in securitizing it? And obviously

suffer, you know, blood and treasure loss if they do get involved. You mentioned how China is in kind of a comfortable position here, it seems. And the markets, that's exactly what the markets are reflecting. I mean, Asian markets are getting pretty much clobbered across the board, except for China, where stocks seem to be barely moving, or at least the impact is far less significant in China. So we've got this dynamic where we're kind of distract. slash highly involved in the region.

It seems to be affecting Europe too. It seems to be affecting emerging markets. China's kind of okay. Does this mean that China may have more of an incentive to invade Taiwan at this point because we're all so distracted? There is an argument that is going around, which is to some extent persuasive.

The U.S. being bogged down and distracted in the Middle East where, you know, using down its precipice, missiles, its ammunition, gives China from a military balance of power perspective some key advantages if it decides to go for Taiwan. But I think that that argument understates the domestic challenges or the domestic changes in China. Two of them, I think, are worth citing. Number one is we've had a complete wipeout of the highest party and state organ that oversees the PLA, the People's Liberation Army. This is the armed forces. combined military of China. And, you know, the fact that we've gotten rid of five of the seven

members, the two remaining members, just being Xi Jinping, the president and his anti-graphed minister, suggests to me that they have not put their house in order to really engage in what would be a risky strategic gamble, even at this point, even when the advantages are probably more accruing to the side of the Chinese. Second, what I have suspected, uh, for the last, I would say, year or so, is that there has been a transition in the leadership, elite leadership in China, to really do a political influence campaign

to try to get the KMT. This is the Guameng that tends to be more pro-mainland back in power in the next election cycle, which will be in 2008, you know, May 2028. Now, I think that it is in Xi Jinping's interest to see if he can achieve that without even firing a shot, because there is, you know, an argument to be had, which I find persuasive, that if they, if they can install a KMT party in the leadership position in Taipei, then they may not even have to do the quarantine or the invasion.

They may come to a political settlement where there is some version of, you know, a special autonomous region, some kind of Hong Kong outcome. Now, I'm still skeptical that that will happen, but I think it's important to flag because I think this is a thing. within the elite leadership in Beijing. And that is why I think in the short term in the next year or so, I'm very doubtful that there will be a quarantine or even an invasion of Taiwan. I guess the reason that our minds go there is because we're all distracted, we're all worried about what's happening in the Middle East.

As you say, China is in a more comfortable, stable position, which makes you think, well, they're going to take advantage of these circumstances somehow. And Taiwan is probably the first thing that comes to mind, at least it was for me, and I think it was for many others. But then the follow-up question is, how might they take advantage of these circumstances, where we're all in pain, we're all distracted, we're all focused on what's happening in Iran, and they're in a more safe and secure position? I am still skeptical because ultimately they do not have, I think,

the military experience and preparedness in the PLA elite general top brass level to really oversee such an ambitious move and endeavor. And I think the military capabilities are extremely important. The military personnel are extremely important. So until we see key changes in the leadership, which I don't think will happen until the next party Congress in October 27, I still remain skeptical. I think the one area where I think China is going to take advantage as the U.S. gets quagmied again in the Middle East is to really try to deep. it's trading relationships and strategic relationships with these other Gulf states. There are some indications that Saudi Arabia in particular is really unhappy with what is happening

and that there could be more strategic ties with Beijing on the back of this. And certainly I think that this plays well with the Europeans too, who, again, are very unhappy with the way in which Trump and Washington have conducted this whole Iran campaign. And I think last but not least, you mentioned Asia and and emerging markets, they are going to be the biggest losers because they are so dependent. Countries like India, for instance, on oil imports from the rest of the world, including notably the Gulf. I think these weakened countries will look to China more as a stable bedrock and a stable power in the region. Again, I think raising China's relative strategic influence

in power in the region and beyond. Very, very big implication. Alice Hahn, director at Green Mantle, co-host of the China Decode podcast. Alice, always appreciate your time. Thanks so much, Ed. Before we end, a quick update on the Iran war. So yesterday, we learned that Israelis' military had killed Ali Larijani, one of Iran's top security chiefs in an airstrike.

In fact, this was someone who was so high up. He at one point had a 30% chance of becoming the next supreme leader of Iran, according to Kalshi. Meanwhile, the death count is growing. 13 American soldiers have lost their lives. 15 are dead in Israel, 850 in Lebanon, 1,500 in Iran. And it appears that despite what we were initially told by this administration, this will not end any time soon. Which means that Americans at home will also be affected, mostly from an economic perspective.

And yes, that doesn't compare to the immense suffering that is happening, abroad, but it is getting to the point now where we do need to take these economic impacts quite seriously because they are actually beginning to matter a lot. So here is a quick update on how the war has affected inflation in America, how it has affected prices. So we will start with obviously crude oil, the price of which has risen nearly 40% since this conflict began. This is now trickling down to gas prices, prices at the pump. which have risen more than 30% since the conflict began. The price of a gallon of regular unleaded is now at its highest level in several years.

Diesel prices are also soaring up more than 30% since we struck Iran. This is a problem for people who drive cars, obviously, but it's also a problem for many other people as well. For example, diesel is essential to the freight industry, which is why freight prices have also risen nearly 30%. It's also critical for the agriculture industry, which is why fertilizer costs have risen around 25%. It is also essential for construction, which is why construction material prices have risen by about 30%. And remember, this is just the beginning, because most of these items are input costs. So the real travel will come when it all trickles down to the consumer in the form of things like higher food prices or higher appliance costs or more expensive air travel, which we are

beginning to see too, perhaps even more expensive housing. Oil and gas, like it or not, are essentially the basis of our entire economy. So when they get more expensive, what that means is that everything else gets more expensive to. And that is just in America. Over in Europe, over in Asia, it is even worse, which means that anything we import from those regions will also be expensive. In fact, it'll be even more expensive. In other words, with this round of inflation, there is essentially no place to hide. Now, the Fed meets today, and it's widely expected that they will keep interest rates steady. They won't change them. But to be clear, more inflation is on the way. And as we just saw in Australia, whose central bank decided on Monday to raise rates,

there is now an incentive in place to slow down the economy and fight inflation, which means we are now battling with the two-headed monster of rising prices and also declining growth. There is an economic word for this, and that word is stagflation. We are not there yet, but with every day this war goes on, we get just a little bit closer. Okay, that's it for today. This episode was produced by Claire Miller and Alison Weiss, edited by Joel Patterson and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our video editor is Brad Williams.

Our research team is Dan Chilan, Isabella Kinsel, Chris Nodonohue, and Mia Silverio. And our social producer is Jake McPherson. Thank you for listening to Profugee Markets from ProftriMedia. If you liked what you heard, give us a follow. I'm Ed Elson. I will see you tomorrow. Thank you.