US stock futures stalled on Thursday as investors sifted through earnings from chip heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA) for a steer on the next leg of the AI trade.

Dow Jones Industrial Average futures (YM=F) edged down 0.2%, following solid wins for stocks more broadly on Wednesday. Contracts on the S&P 500 (ES=F) and the tech-exposed Nasdaq 100 (NQ=F) both slipped 0.1%.

Nvidia (NVDA) shares jumped on the heels of a big earnings beat before paring gains to about 1% in premarket. The semiconductor giant topped Wall Street expectations for quarterly profit and revenue, soothing some fears around the "AI scare trade" that has gripped markets. By contrast, Salesforce (CRM) shares fell roughly 4%, continuing an AI-driven sell-off that's seen the stock drop 28% year-to-date.

Looking ahead on the economic calendar, investors will parse weekly jobless claims data due Thursday, followed by January’s producer price index report on Friday.

Wall Street also continues to see earnings come through, with quarterly results from Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), Dell Technologies (DELL) and CoreWeave (CRWV) all slated to report Thursday.

Bloomberg reports:

A 20% slide in Baidu Inc.'s (BIDU) shares over the past month serves as a crucial reminder for companies in China’s rapidly intensifying artificial intelligence race: investors are demanding tangible results.

The search engine specialist kicks off December-quarter earnings for China’s Big Tech on Thursday, amid growing concern that its AI investments are not translating into a meaningful growth driver quickly enough. Despite strength in the cloud business, analysts predict both revenue and profit to fall year on year, hurt by continued weakness in the core advertising business that’s closely tied to the broader economy.

With markets fixated on AI, positive management commentary or evidence that capital spending is bearing fruit will be crucial to help stem an equity rout that’s eroded $11 billion in market value since a three-year high on Jan. 23.

Read more here.

Yahoo Finance's Dan Howley reports:

Nvidia (NVDA) reported its fiscal fourth quarter results after the bell on Wednesday, beating analysts' expectations on the top and bottom lines.

The company also provided Q1 guidance of $76.44 billion to $79.56 billion, above Wall Street's estimate of $72.8 billion. Nvidia shares were up more than 2% in after-hours trade.

For the quarter, Nvidia saw earnings per share of $1.62 on revenue of $68.1 billion. Wall Street was anticipating EPS of $1.53 on revenue of $65.8 billion, according to Bloomberg analyst consensus estimates. The company reported EPS of $0.89 and revenue of $39.3 billion in the same quarter last year.

Nvidia's data center drove the vast majority of that growth, bringing in $62.3 billion for the period. That's better than analysts' projections of $60.2 billion.

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