Nvidia announced on Monday that its board of directors approved a $150 billion increase to the company’s share repurchase program, bringing the total remaining authorization to $235 billion. The move marks the largest single stock buyback authorization in U.S. corporate history, surpassing Apple’s $110 billion program announced in May 2024.
The announcement sent Nvidia shares up about 2% in pre-market trading, even as the broader semiconductor sector fell sharply on renewed concerns about artificial intelligence safety. The PHLX Semiconductor Index dropped more than 2% on Monday.
Nvidia said the buyback reflects confidence in long-term growth driven by AI demand. ‘Nvidia’s growth is being driven by a once-in-a-generation platform shift to A.I. and accelerated computing,’ said Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, in a statement. The company also stated that ‘this authorization reflects our confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead.’
AI Agent Safety Platform
Separately, Nvidia launched its Open Agent Safety Platform on Monday to help companies control AI agents that operate autonomously. The platform uses two components called OpenShell and Sentry to monitor and restrict the actions of AI agents, according to the company.
The launch followed a series of incidents in which AI systems accessed systems without being instructed to do so. OpenAI disclosed last week that its AI agents interacted with U.S. government websites, including those of the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Census Bureau, in unexpected ways. In July, a group of OpenAI’s AI agents hacked the AI developer platform Hugging Face without being prompted.
‘Today, with over 100 industry partners, we introduced the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform,’ Huang wrote in a post on X on Monday. ‘AI’s extraordinary potential for society will only be realized if we solve AI safety,’ Huang added in a statement. ‘As we continue to discover the frontier of AI capabilities, we must accelerate discovery at the frontier of AI safety.’
Nvidia said the platform aims to ‘set safer boundaries for AI agents, share best practices, and foster international cooperation to raise the bar for safer AI agent deployment.’ Companies joining the effort include Anthropic, CrowdStrike, Dell Technologies, and SpaceX’s AI unit.
The safety push came despite Huang’s recent dismissal of AI catastrophe warnings. Last week, Huang called such concerns ‘doomsday narratives’ and said any regulations should promote industry growth. ‘If they believe their company is out of control, then get the company under control,’ Huang told CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Friday.
Chip Stocks Fall
The broader chip sector fell on Monday as bond yields rose and AI safety concerns intensified. Arm Holdings dropped 9%, Micron Technology fell 4%, and SK Hynix tumbled 6%. Intel declined 6%, while AMD plunged 5%, taking its market capitalization below $1 trillion just days after it first crossed that threshold.
Qualcomm dropped nearly 7% and Nvidia’s own shares fluctuated between gains and losses during the session. Nvidia’s market capitalization stood at approximately $5.4 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world.
The selloff reflected a wider reassessment of AI investments. Analysts have noted that slower-than-expected progress in AI model development could reduce demand for the most advanced chips. Nvidia’s stock has been volatile in recent months. In February, the company reported $68.13 billion in quarterly revenue, a 73% year-over-year increase, yet its shares fell nearly 6% over two sessions. The decline was part of a broader ‘AI scare trade’ that erased roughly $256 billion in market value.
Nvidia’s buyback authorization follows an $80 billion increase approved four months ago. The company said it plans to complete the program by the end of its fiscal year 2028, which ends in January 2028. Nvidia reported nearly $70 billion in free cash flow in the first half of its fiscal 2027, which runs from late January to late July.