Nvidia (NVDA), the world's largest company by market capitalization, will report fourth quarter results after the closing bell on Wednesday. The closely watched release could renew faith in the artificial intelligence trade or add fuel to growing concerns about how big bets on AI will pay off.

Nvidia's quarterly results have become a market-moving event over the past few years, as the chipmaker sells the chips that underpin the AI boom, has deep financial relationships with the Big Tech firms and startups that buy those chips, and remains the most heavily weighted stock in the S&P 500 (^GSPC).

Stocks rose on Tuesday as concerns about AI disruption eased and the rolling sell-offs in software and other sectors paused. Helping lift tech stocks were several new features and partnerships that Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) unveiled, as well as AMD's (AMD) 6-gigawatt GPU deal with Meta (META).

With markets continuing to rebound on Wednesday morning, investors will pay close attention to what Nvidia's results and guidance tell markets about the state of AI demand and what that means for dozens of other tech and software stocks caught in Nvidia's web of influence.

Follow along for the latest updates on Nvidia and the tech sector.

Nvidia's (NVDA) quarterly results scheduled for Wednesday afternoon mark the winding down of earnings season, as the chip titan is the last of the \\"Magnificent Seven\\" tech companies to report.

But with Nvidia's GTC 2026 event only a few weeks away, news from the leading AI company may be just getting started.

Our technology editor, Dan Howley, previewed what to expect when Nvidia reports results (earnings per share of $1.53 on revenue of $65.8 billion; data center revenue of $60.2 billion for the quarter). Investors will also be looking for details on Blackwell chip sales and China sales.

Howley notes that although Nvidia recently launched a new AI superchip and announced a massive, multiyear deal with Meta, its stock price has seen a tepid reaction. That disconnect reveals a larger debate over the state of the artificial intelligence trade and whether it is plateauing or will continue to accelerate.

\\"The real debate is what growth looks like in 2027 and 2028,\\" Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote in a blog post.

;cpos:7;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\\" class=\\"link yahoo-link\\">Read the full breakdown of what to watch when Nvidia reports earnings > 

Bloomberg reports:

Anthropic PBC, which has pledged to make artificial intelligence guardrails a priority, has loosened its central safety policy, saying the move is necessary to keep pace in a rapidly changing field.

The company in 2023 said in its Responsible Scaling Policy that it would delay AI development that might be dangerous. In a Tuesday blog post, Anthropic said it was updating its rules to say it would no longer do so if it believes it lacks a significant lead over a competitor.

“The policy environment has shifted toward prioritizing AI competitiveness and economic growth, while safety-oriented discussions have yet to gain meaningful traction at the federal level,” Anthropic said in its post.

The move is surprising because Anthropic has consistently tried to distinguish itself through its safety stance as it races with OpenAI, Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Elon Musk’s xAI Corp. for dominance in what many view as a revolutionary new technology. Dario Amodei, chief executive officer of Anthropic, used to work at OpenAI and left in part because of his concerns that the startup was prioritizing commercialization and speed over safety.

Read more here.

Nvidia stock (NVDA) is poised to see its smallest post-earnings swing in three years after the company reports after the bell on Wednesday.

Nvidia options imply a move of about ‌5.6%, or $260 billion in market capitalization, in either direction on Thursday, according to Option Research & Technology Services (ORATS).

Nvidia stock advanced 0.8% in premarket trading on Wednesday ahead of the report as traders priced in their expectations.

\\"We feel generally pretty favorable in terms of Nvidia for the quarter and even for the guidance,\\" FBB Capital Partners director of research Mike Bailey told Yahoo Finance. \\"I think the real question mark is sentiment.\\"

\\"You know, Nvidia's stock has been right around with the market for ... three to six months,\\" Bailey added. \\"To us, that suggests investors really don't have massive expectations built up for the quarter.\\"

PayPal (PYPL) stock spiked 6% in afternoon trading after Bloomberg reported that payments processor Stripe (STRI.PVT) is reportedly interested in acquiring all or some of the legacy fintech company.

PayPal has reportedly been fielding unsolicited buyout offers after its stock suffered a major slide that wiped out 20% of its value year to date. People familiar with the matter told Bloomberg that Stripe was among the suitors that expressed preliminary interest in the company but that deliberations are still in the early stages.

On Tuesday, Stripe published an annual letter disclosing a tender offer agreement that values the company at $159 billion, a 74% increase from Stripe's $91.5 billion valuation a year ago. The sale of employee shares makes the privately held company one of the industry's most valuable companies.

Nvidia (NVDA) has not yet sold any of its H200 chips to Chinese customers, a Commerce Department official said on Tuesday.

\\"My understanding is that none so far,\\" Commerce Assistant ‌Secretary ​for ​Export ​Enforcement David ‌Peters said at ​a ​congressional hearing when asked ​about ‌Nvidia's second-most-powerful chips.

According to a Reuters report, the Chinese embassy in the US and Nvidia have yet to respond to requests for comment.

In late January, Beijing gave three of China's largest tech companies, ByteDance, Alibaba (BABA, 9988.HK), and Tencent (0700.HK, TCEHY), approval to purchase more than ‌400,000 H200 chips.

Read more from Reuters.

Anthropic on Tuesday announced a new suite of enterprise offerings, the latest in a series of new capabilities boasted by AI labs like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI that have shaken investor confidence in a variety of software solutions that may see their core product replaced by an AI facsimile.

But some Wall Street analysts aren't so sure the process will be quite that simple.

Dan Ives, high profile tech bull at Wedbush, wrote in a note Tuesday after Anthropic's announcement that, \\"While these use cases are impressive, the reality is that these new AI tools will not rip and replace existing software ecosystems and data environments with these AI tools only as useful as the data it can reach.\\"

In Ives' view, there are three things investors who view these demos as a sign of AI outcompeting legacy solutions might be missing.

One — \\"The market is conflating foundation model capability with full enterprise software replacement and the fear that generative AI will 'rewrite legacy systems overnight' ignores enterprise reality.\\"

Two — \\"AI agents and autonomous workflows dramatically increase the attack surface — more APIs, more machine identities, more lateral movement risk, and more cloud-native workloads. AI doesn’t reduce the need for endpoint, identity, cloud, and SOC automation, it multiplies it.\\"

Three — \\"Anthropic/OpenAI do not have 20-year enterprise distribution networks, CIO relationships, or embedded vertical workflows. CRM, NOW, and MSFT sit at the application layer where business logic lives. The model layer will commoditize faster than the workflow layer.\\"

The key point that I think Ives raises is that model advances — or other signs of what we might call technical brilliance — are not the same as an in-market product that gets customers to change their spending habits.

Obviously, as we saw with the market's reaction to a Substack post on Monday that was explicitly a thought experiment, there are lots of investor nerves about which advances could draw meaningful dollars from enterprises or consumers.

But as ever, the distance between a demo and a product can often be vast. Keeping that framework in mind might serve investors well in the current moment.

Apple (AAPL) stock rose more than 2% on Tuesday, outperforming its \\"Magnificent Seven\\" tech peers, on news that the iPhone maker will deepen its manufacturing push in the US.

On Tuesday, Apple said it plans to move Mac mini production from Asia to a new facility in Houston. At that same site, Apple also plans to expand advanced AI server manufacturing as part of the $600 billion US manufacturing commitment it made last year amid pressure from the Trump administration.

Apple is also wielding its purchasing power to boost American chipmaking at a new Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM) factory north of Phoenix, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Year to date, Apple stock has held up better than its peers as the company stands back from the major up-front investments other Big Tech companies are making to build massive data centers. In that regard, my colleague Dan Howley points out, Apple's reluctance to be the first to roll out major AI upgrades — seen as a weakness against its peers — has become a kind of strength as the AI trade faces upheaval.

Yahoo Finance's Daniel Howley reports:

Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) on Tuesday unveiled a host of new enterprise capabilities for its Claude AI, less than a month after the company launched plugins for the platform, sending software stocks into a tailspin.

The updated features, Anthropic said, include plugins designed for specific departments within an organization, such as human resources and investment banking; allow customers to create customized plugins tailored to specific company tasks; and connect Claude to existing software, including Google's (GOOG, GOOGL) Drive and Gmail, DocuSign (DOCU), and LegalZoom (LZ).

\\"We think that the best way to drive enterprise AI adoption is to build dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of these plugins … We think of them almost as mini apps,\\" explained Matt Piccolella, who works on products at Anthropic.

... The announcements have put enormous pressure on shares of enterprise software developers. ServiceNow (NOW) stock is off more than 23% since Anthropic initially announced Claude Cowork on Jan. 30. Salesforce (CRM) is down 22%, Snowflake (SNOW) has dropped 20%, Intuit (INTU) has fallen 33%, and Thomson Reuters (TRI) has declined a whopping 31%.

;cpos:12;pos:1;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas;outcm:mb_qualified_link;_E:mb_qualified_link;ct:story;\\" class=\\"link yahoo-link\\">Read the full story >

As stocks struggled to regain their footing after a bumpy start to the week, the tech sector remained under pressure at the start of the trading day on Tuesday.

Here's a look at some trending tech tickers moving on the latest tech news:

AMD (AMD) stock jumped 5% on news of the chipmaker's multiyear agreement with Meta (META) to supply 6 gigawatts in chips to the hyperscaler. Scroll down to read more about the deal or check out the full story here.

Oracle (ORCL) shares slipped further at the open after a report from The Information stated that the $500 billion Stargate project announced in January 2025 to build data centers has stalled after months of disputes among Oracle, OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), and Softbank (SFTBY). As a result, the project missed its self-imposed goal of delivering 10 gigawatts of AI computing capacity in 2025.

International Business Machines (IBM) shares began to recover after Anthropic's announcement that its Claude Code AI tool could help modernize Common Business-Oriented Language, or COBOL code, which is used in nearly all ATM transactions in the US. COBOL has been used in many of the enterprise systems IBM sells, leading investors to believe a core part of its business may be threatened by AI disruption. IBM stock rose more than 1%.

Alphabet (GOOG) stock slipped into the red at the open after its self-driving unit, Waymo, said it's expanding its robotaxi service in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, and Orlando.

Uber (UBER) stock edged higher after the ride-hailing company announced on Monday that it would acquire SpotHero, a parking reservation app.

Yahoo Finance's Daniel Howley reports:

Meta (META) and AMD (AMD) are entering into a multiyear agreement that will see Meta purchase upward of 6 gigawatts worth of AI chips as part of its massive AI build-out.

As part of the deal, announced Tuesday, AMD will issue Meta 160 million shares of common stock that will vest in a series of tranches if AMD hits certain milestones, the first of which will hit when AMD ships its first 1 gigawatt of chips.

AMD shares jumped as much as 10% in premarket trading on Tuesday.

“We expect this partnership to drive substantial multi-year revenue growth and be accretive to our non-GAAP earnings per share, marking another significant step forward in delivering on our ambitious long-term financial model,” AMD CFO Jean Hu said in a statement.

“The performance-based structure also tightly aligns AMD and Meta around execution and long-term value creation.”

Read more here.