Nvidia Banks on Japan and the Gulf for Long-Term Growth as Short-Term Traders Rotate Out

Nvidia partners with Japan on a national AI factory and secures unrestricted UAE chip sales, while its stock falls 12% from its peak, ceding the world's most valuable company title to Apple.

Nvidia’s sprawling infrastructure ambitions are playing out on two continents even as the stock slips from its perch as the world’s most valuable company. The chipmaker has locked in a $6.2 billion, five-year project to build Japan’s first national artificial intelligence factory, while a simultaneous regulatory win in the United Arab Emirates opens the door for unrestricted sales of its next-generation Blackwell processors in the Gulf.

The Japan initiative, announced at a Tokyo press conference on July 16, is a public-private partnership with the Japanese AI firm Noetra. Backed by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry’s “FRONTia” programme, the venture will deploy 27,500 Rubin-series GPUs and 13,750 Vera CPUs to create what Nvidia calls the world’s first national infrastructure dedicated to physical AI and robotics. A consortium of 44 major Japanese corporations is participating, including SoftBank, Sony, Honda, NEC, Fujitsu, FANUC, Yaskawa Electric and Kawasaki Heavy Industries. The goal is to develop localised, multimodal AI models for industrial use and build a control platform bridging digital and physical systems.

Separately, the U.S. Department of Commerce on July 10 elevated the UAE to its highest trust tier for technology exports. The change eliminates the need for individual shipment approvals for advanced Nvidia chips, clearing a path for sovereign-scale orders from Gulf states building their own AI data centres. Analysts had long flagged export restrictions as one of the key risks hanging over the stock.

These strategic moves come as Nvidia’s share price cools from a blistering rally. The stock closed Friday at €177.46, down 2.14% on the day and 3.97% for the week. That puts it 12.37% below the record high of €202.50 reached in May. The pullback is enough for Apple to reclaim the title of the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of roughly $4.9 trillion versus Nvidia’s $4.86 trillion. In October 2025 Nvidia had briefly become the first company ever to cross the $5 trillion mark.

Investors are rotating capital toward consumer-oriented AI services, a shift that weighs on Nvidia more than on Apple. Yet the longer-term picture remains intact. The stock is still up 10.72% year to date and remains well above its 200-day moving average of €165.34. It slipped below the 50-day average of €181.83, however, and the relative strength index sits at a neutral 48.8, suggesting the market is searching for direction.

A series of near-term catalysts could determine whether the current consolidation deepens or gives way to another leg higher. This week alone brings the China central bank’s interest rate decision on Monday, which has implications for the Asian semiconductor supply chain. Alphabet and Tesla report earnings on Tuesday and Wednesday, offering a window into big tech’s commitment to AI infrastructure spending. Intel follows on Thursday with its own quarterly results, and the European Central Bank will announce its rate decision the same day.

Closer to home for Nvidia, the SIGGRAPH 2026 conference kicks off in Los Angeles on Monday, with the company holding its keynote in the afternoon. Investors will scrutinise progress on neural rendering, world models and generative simulation — and especially the transition to the Rubin architecture, which is seen as critical to maintaining Nvidia’s technological edge into the next chip cycle. Nvidia’s own fiscal second-quarter results are not due until August 26, leaving the SIGGRAPH presentation and the earnings from key customers as the most immediate mood-setters for the shares.