Notes from investor meetings – Sovereign AI emerging as a major new demand driver for Nvidia

This week I attended the 52^nd Nasdaq investor conference in London, organized in co-operation with one of our brokers, Jefferies. The lineup of companies was impressive. Not every day that you, as Portfolio Manager from Helsinki, get to join discussions with leading Nasdaq listed companies like NVIDIA, Microsoft or Qualcomm, to name a few.

For me, the most anticipated encounter was with Colette Kress, the amazing CFO of NVIDIA who has been instrumental in the company’s success story. NVIDIA is our largest holding in Fondita Global Megatrends, which of course makes it even more important.

For NVIDIA the last couple of years immense success has been driven by the rising investments into Artificial Intelligence (AI). NVIDIA, a leading provider of comprehensive AI-solutions, offers a wide range of powerful GPUs and systems designed for training and inference, as well as AI-powered applications, tools and software frameworks.

NVIDIA’s extraordinary success over the past few years, culminating in a market cap surpassing 3 trillion € in 2025, can be attributed to a combination of technological leadership, strategic foresight, and market timing.

On the demand side, Sovereign AI is emerging as a major new demand driver. One that could rival cloud service providers (CSPs) in scale over time. Sovereign AI refers to a nation’s capabilities to produce artificial intelligence using its own infrastructure, workforce and business networks – taking into consideration their own language, culture and especially the data. According to Colette, every country will have its own specifications and there will not be only one foundation. Huge opportunities across multiple verticals will arise and there will be different cloud setups in different countries with multiple partners. NVIDIA has already shared news around partnerships in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia and UAE), had talks with the UK government this week and discussions will continue after NVIDIAs big GTC conference in Paris. This is clearly an area to keep an eye on, and at the time of writing NVIDIA just announced a major partnership with the European Union and France to accelerate the development of sovereign AI infrastructure across the continent.

While Sovereign AI is strategically critical and growing fast, cloud hyperscalers still dominate in terms of near-term investments. Besides these opportunities there was also an optimistic tone regarding supply chain ramp up (Blackwell) and confidence in the path to mid-70 % margins by year end. Networking remains strong and gaming also grows with the last quarter being the best so far. Colette also highlighted AI opportunities across enterprise / AI PC: s, automotive / EV and robotaxis, physical AI – humanoid robots for industrial manufacturing and opportunities within call centers for increased efficiency.

Business with China is currently more difficult due to the Trump administrations restrictions. Currently China H20 chip deliveries are shut down. The company is complying with rules, but they want to continue to work with the US government for a resolution. NVIDIA still sees China as a potentially $50bn market.

I might be a bit starstruck, but the message was very confident. And so should the delivery of growth be for the upcoming years in order for valuation to be reasonable.

Janna Haahtela, Portfolio Manager