When Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA) reported one of the most lopsided quarters in corporate history this month, the stock barely flinched.

The chip giant posted first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% year-over-year, alongside an $80 billion buyback expansion and a dividend hiked from a penny to 25 cents.

Yet NVDA is up only around 13% on the year, well below its mid-May highs near $236.

Why The Bull Case Holds

Gavin Baker of Atreides Management, speaking on the All-In podcast, pushed back on the loudest bear narrative: that custom ASICs from Broadcom Inc (NASDAQ:AVGO) and the hyperscalers are eroding Nvidia’s moat.

Stripping out China, he argued, Nvidia’s western data-center growth may actually be outpacing rivals, even with Broadcom guiding for roughly 143% growth.

His sharper point was that competitors appear reluctant to submit custom chips to independent benchmarks like MLPerf, which he suggested implies they expect to lose.

Nvidia indicated its CPU business is tracking toward $20 billion this year, a figure that would make it one of the world’s larger CPU makers almost overnight, Baker said.

Baker also challenged the fear that GPUs go obsolete within two years, the write-down risk associated with investors like Michael Burry.

Because inference is being disaggregated, he argued, older chips can sit behind specialized accelerators for decode tasks, potentially stretching their useful life toward 10 to 15 years, which he suggested helps explain why neo-clouds like CoreWeave Inc (NASDAQ:CRWV) can secure asset-backed financing near 6%.

The Gravity The Tape Is Pricing

Bond yields have climbed, with the U.S. 10-year touching 4.6%, while inflation forecasts have crept toward the 4% to 6% range and the narrative has shifted from rate cuts toward potential hikes.

When risk-free yields rise, equity multiples tend to compress automatically. By that logic, Nvidia may be caught less in a fundamental story than in a broad repricing it cannot escape.

Nvidia’s own product cycle adds a second worry.

Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, has flagged the risk that customers delay Blackwell orders while waiting for the next-generation Rubin platform, creating a temporary slowdown, though he noted the company’s annual product cadence is designed to prevent exactly that.

What Prediction Markets Are Pricing

On Polymarket’s largest company end of December 2026 market, Nvidia holds a roughly 67% probability of remaining the world’s most valuable company at year-end, with Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) second near 20%.

Whether that gap widens may hinge less on results, which have beaten expectations in 18 of the last 20 quarters, than on the rate backdrop. For now, the company keeps printing records while its stock waits for the market to catch up.

Image: Shutterstock