Nvidia CEO shocks AI community over the one thing he didn’t do

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Nvidia (NVDA) rarely missteps. But this time, the chip giant made a big mistake, namely, missing a key headline moment in one of the world’s fastest-growing AI markets.

However, when it comes to behind-the-scenes moves, something big is brewing.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang missed the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, citing “unforeseen circumstances.”

The optics were not great. The event was big, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi making a key speech at an event touted as the harbinger of India’s artificial intelligence ambitions.

Indian media, including India News, reported extensively on the matter. But for Nvidia stock investors, the financial implications of the move with respect to the Indian market are more important than ever.

That is where Nvidia needs to focus.

Nvidia just made a strange move.Fallon/AFP via Getty Images

(Fallon/AFP via Getty Images)

India’s $1B AI mission is rapidly expanding Nvidia’s footprint

India’s government-backed IndiaAI Mission is allocating $1 billion to expand domestic compute capacity, develop sovereign datasets, and train large-scale foundation models within the local Indian market context, Arab News Pakistan reported.

And almost all of the infrastructure is on Nvidia GPUs. The usual suspects in the Indian market are Yotta, Larsen & Toubro, and E2E Networks. And they are using tens of thousands of Nvidia chips across hyperscale facilities in Mumbai, Chennai, and Noida.

I have observed the details of these plans, and India is taking the initiatives seriously; they are not mere experimental pilot projects.

These are industrial-scale AI clusters that are meant for:

Large language model training
High-volume inference
Multilingual AI applications
Government and financial services deployments

Let’s put this into context. India is home to more than 1.4 billion people. Among that large number of people are more than 900 million internet users in one of the fastest-growing digital economies globally, per The Economic Times. Analysts forecast India’s AI market could exceed $257.45 billion by the early 2030s, according to AInvest.

If that growth is realized, as India hopes, Nvidia will stand to gain substantially and capture a meaningful share of the compute layer, considering its latest initiatives.

Why Nvidia stock could benefit from sovereign AI demand

U.S. hyperscalers such as Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Alphabet (GOOGL) have been driving Nvidia’s rally for the last two years.

And while sustaining dominance requires global expansion, what I like regarding the India thesis is that it represents something different. For example, India has a state-backed AI industrial policy.

Every time India deploys large-scale Blackwell chips, the following happens.

Expands Nvidia’s international revenue mix
Strengthens developer lock-in through NeMo and Nemotron
Boosts pricing power in emerging markets
Reduces reliance on U.S.-centric capex cycles
Offers real-world implications for Nvidia’s valuation

Nvidia’s data-center revenue has tripled recently and become the company’s core earnings engine. Sales of data centers are responsible for much of the revenue increase in the last several quarters, and gross margins are close to all-time highs.

Sovereign AI buildouts are accelerating globally. India is leading the world outside the U.S. and China, and Nvidia’s addressable market expands dramatically.

Here’s the kicker: Consumer cycles are subject to fluctuation. However, national AI infrastructure investments are multi-year commitments.

The optics vs. the install base

When Huang decided to skip the high-profile geopolitical event, it generated massive speculation, and rightfully so.

India is actively trying to position itself as a global AI power. Public alignment between these two segments of the market, political leaders and chip suppliers, carries symbolic weight.

More Nvidia:

However, financial markets will reward revenue visibility, and, more importantly, India is standardizing on Nvidia architecture at scale.

Startups all across India are extensively working on multilingual models in Nvidia’s stack. Meanwhile, the Indian government is also reserving GPU capacity for sovereign workloads. Hyperscale facilities are being developed specifically for Nvidia platforms.

For me, it creates ecosystem gravity, and ecosystem gravity generates durable pricing leverage.

For NVDA stockholders, the key question is not whether Jensen Huang attends a summit. Instead, it’s whether India’s AI infrastructure is structurally dependent on Blackwell.

Overall, the trajectory appears to be correct.

The bottom line for NVDA investors

Huang’s absence will draw headlines, but India’s expanding GPU footprint will keep driving long-term revenue growth.

Nvidia is desperately trying to justify its premium positioning; the stock is trading at 46.56 times price-to-earnings. That kind of multiple requires justification, which will only occur if the company shows it can maintain its extraordinary growth in its AI data center business.

Under these circumstances, sovereign buildouts like India’s will become one of the most sustained growth drivers for Nvidia for the coming decade; these incremental demand drivers are essential for Nvidia to grow into its valuation.

In summary, the Indian digital economy is expanding rapidly, and its AI ambitions are national in scale. On top of it all, Nvidia is powering these markets.

The CEO may not be in New Delhi, but Nvidia is already embedded in India’s AI future, and for Nvidia stock, that is likely to matter more.

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Feb 19, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.