Nvidia stock rises as CEO Jensen Huang calls 'crazy' chip demand

Nvidia ( NVDA ) stock rose as much as 5% Thursday as CEO Jensen Huang said demand for its next-generation Blackwell chips has been “insane.”

In an interview with CNBC on Wednesday after the market closed, Huang confirmed that the chips are “in full production” despite some delays in customer rollout due to recent design issues.

“Blackwell is on plan,” Huang said. “Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be the first.”

The Blackwell delay has been a concern for investors, with many looking to the rollout as the next big catalyst for the chipmaker after a recent stock slump due to a mid-July sell-off from yen carry trade woes.

Since then, markets have seen a spin out of Big Tech while other macroeconomic factors, such as China trade fears, have also hampered Nvidia's stock price.

But investors and analysts alike are largely bullish on the trajectory of the AI trade. Nvidia's stock is still up nearly 170% over the past 12 months and more than 2,700% over the past five years. Year to date, Nvidia has gained nearly 150%.

90% of Wall Street analysts recommend the stock a buy, with most predicting the shares will rise to around $147.60 in the coming year, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.

On top of its latest Blackwell update, Nvidia's progress also came on the upside as the company backed ChatGPT developer OpenAI (MSFT) in its latest funding round, which closed on Wednesday.

OpenAI managed to raise an additional $6.6 billion to reach a $157 billion valuation in another bullish sign of the AI boom.

Gil Luria, senior software analyst at DA Davidson, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance that data center demand that will benefit the chipmaker “has a direct flow to Nvidia from the funding round announced today.” “That's why stocks are up today,” he said.