Nvidia Falls 6% Despite Record Earnings as AI Giants Seek Alternatives

$68 billion in revenue. 77% growth forecast. By any measure, Nvidia's Wednesday earnings were spectacular. So why did the stock fall 6% this week, marking its worst performance since November?

The answer lies not in what Nvidia achieved, but in what its biggest customers are quietly planning.

The Paradox of Perfect Numbers

Nvidia's January quarter revenue jumped 73% year-over-year to $68 billion. CEO Jensen Huang declared that "compute demand is skyrocketing." The company even guided for 77% growth in the current quarter—the fastest expansion rate in a year.

Yet investors are looking beyond these impressive figures to a more sobering reality: analysts project growth will decelerate sharply from 65% this fiscal year to 30%, 13%, and 14% in the following three years. That's the difference between a rocket ship and a mature business.

The Great Diversification

The real story emerged in the customer announcements. OpenAI, long Nvidia's poster child, revealed it would consume 2 gigawatts of Amazon's Trainium AI chip capacity. This came as OpenAI closed a $110 billion funding round, with Amazon contributing $50 billion and Nvidia just $30 billion.

"This is the single biggest validation of Amazon's custom AI silicon strategy to date," noted Patrick Moorhead of Moor Insights and Strategy. It gives OpenAI "a real hedge against Nvidia supply constraints and pricing power."

Meta is making similar moves. The company committed to 6 gigawatts of AMD's Instinct GPUs and reportedly struck a multibillion-dollar deal for Google's Tensor Processing Units. Even smaller players like Cerebras are gaining traction, with OpenAI committing to 750 megawatts of their computing power.

The Economics of Dependency

Why are Nvidia's best customers suddenly shopping elsewhere? The answer is both strategic and financial. When you're spending billions on AI infrastructure, dependency on a single supplier becomes a business risk. Nvidia's pricing power—once a competitive advantage—now motivates customers to find alternatives.

This shift reflects the maturation of the AI market. Early adopters accepted Nvidia's premium pricing because alternatives didn't exist. Now, as AI moves from experimentation to production, cost optimization becomes critical.

The Buying Opportunity Question

With Nvidia down 16% for the year, some analysts see a buying opportunity. Jefferies maintains its buy rating, noting that "the stock continues to get cheaper." But cheaper doesn't always mean better value.

The fundamental question isn't whether Nvidia will continue growing—it almost certainly will. The question is whether it can maintain the extraordinary growth rates that justify its premium valuation as competition intensifies.