Nvidia stock is down 2.6% this year and has underperformed major AI peers

Jensen Huang’s Nvidia (the most valuable company on earth) has been getting slapped around on Wall Street for weeks, and it’s starting to get weird.

The NVDA stock is down 2.6% in 2026 so far, and even though it’s still up 38% over the last year, it’s clearly lost its grip compared to the rest of the AI gang.

And that’s with constant announcements and new gear flooding out of the pipeline. Earlier in the year, Cryptopolitan reported that Nvidia rolled out its Vera Rubin platform at CES, made a big noise about demand staying strong, and has continued pitching new AI products like it’s on a mission.

Q4 earnings season has officially kicked in, as you likely know, and Nvidia Day is coming on the 26th of February.

Investors are blaming weak AI sentiment for stock crash, not Nvidia itself

Freedom Capital Markets’ veteran tech analyst Paul Meeks says he still backs Nvidia hard and sees it going to $250 per share in the next two years. For anyone not holding the stock, he says it’s time to start buying.

Meeks also said that a major boost could come from Nvidia signing deals outside tech, like with General Motors or Johnson & Johnson, and also AI capex plans for 2026 from the cloud giants.

Chris Caso, an analyst at Wolfe Research, also still sees Nvidia as a leader, calling it his “favorite AI idea”. He pointed to the aforementioned Vera Rubin platform’s leap over the older Blackwell chips, saying the tech improvements let Nvidia keep pricing power and protect profit margins.

But Caso says the recent slump came from three main things: the late launch of Blackwell, fears about how long AI spending will last, and Nvidia possibly losing ground to custom AI chips built in-house by big players.

Rotation away from growth stocks added pressure on Nvidia’s stock

Hank Smith, head of strategy at Haverford Trust, says Nvidia’s weakness doesn’t mean any other company can overtake it, at least not anytime soon anyway. The analyst is waiting for the stock to crash around $150 to $160, where he expects tons of investors (both retail and institutional) to “rapidly buy the dip.”

Smith added that Nvidia is currently trading around 25–27 times forward earnings, which he says means it’s no longer in “nosebleed territory.”

But not everyone’s been scared off. On Wednesday, NVDA fell another 2%, but analysts doubled down on their bullish takes. Tristan Gerra at Baird called Nvidia one of his top ideas for 2026, citing its low multiple compared to other AI names and its dominant spot in AI data centers. He set a $275 price target, saying Nvidia has no serious competition in the medium term.

Gerra also rejected the view that Nvidia’s market share will fall once inferencing becomes more popular. “Hyperscalers own their custom chip designs,” he wrote, “but Nvidia owns all of its own IP.” That, to him, is a huge edge.

Stacy Rasgon at Bernstein also called Nvidia a top pick this week. He pointed to steady AI spending and a stock price that’s now far more reasonable than it was during the hype surge. Rasgon said the valuation is “extremely attractive” given Nvidia’s scale and tech pipeline.

Data from TradingView shows Sundar Pichai’s Alphabet has surged by 77% YTD, Lisa Su’s AMD has exploded 91%, and even Hocky Tan’s Broadcom is sitting on a 51% gain, all outperforming Nvidia.

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