FEBRUARYASIA BUSINESS OUTLOOK9NEWSROOMMETA SLATED TO FUNNEL USD 65B TO EXPAND AI INFRASTRUCTUREMonday's massive selloff in AI-darling Nvidia's shares did little to blunt options traders' enthusiasm for the chipmaker's shares, with traders quick to pile back into bullish Nvidia contracts as the stock recovered on Tuesday.Nvidia shares slumped about 17 per cent or close to $593 billion in market value - a record one-day loss for any company - on Monday on worries sparked by a low-cost Chinese artificial intelligence model that threatens the dominance of U.S. rivals. The stock was up about 7 per cent on Tuesday.The selloff jolted investors long used to the stock climbing ever higher, but options traders were already seizing the opportunity to position for a rebound."It's certainly been a speed bump for many but it hasn't halted the activity," said Steve Sosnick, chief strategist at Interactive Brokers."On Tuesday, call options, typically bought to express a bullish view on a stock, outnumbered put options 1.6-to-1, nearly in line with the 1-year average, after dipping to a more than two-month low of 1.36-to-1 on Monday."We've seen tremendous dip-buying," Sosnick said.Some 5.4 million Nvidia options contracts changed hands by 1:30 p.m. (1830 GMT), at nearly twice the usual pace, according to Trade Alert data.Options traders had gotten extremely bullish on Nvidia and AI technology in general in the days leading up to the selloff with sentiment being helped along by last week's announcement by President Donald Trump of a massive private-sector investment to build more AI data centers. Meta Platforms plans to spend as much as $65 billion this year to expand its AI infrastructure, CEO Mark Zuckerberg said on Friday, aiming to bolster the company's position against rivals OpenAI and Google in the race to dominate the technology. As part of the investment, Meta will ramp up hiring for artificial intelligence roles and build a more than 2-gigawatt data center that would be large enough to cover a significant part of Manhattan.The company -- among the top buyers of Nvidia's sought-after AI chips -- aims to end the year with over 1.3 million graphics processors and plans to bring about 1 GW of computing power online in 2025."This will be a defining year for AI," Zuckerberg said in a Facebook post. "This is a massive effort, and over the coming years it will drive our core products and business."Big technology firms have been investing tens of billions of dollars to develop AI infrastructure after the success of OpenAI's ChatGPT.Meta's announcement comes just days after U.S. President Donald Trump announced that OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle will form a venture called Stargate and invest $500 billion in AI infrastructure across the U.S.Earlier this month, Microsoft said it was planning to invest about $80 billion in fiscal 2025 to develop data centers, while Amazon.com has said its 2025 spending would be higher than an estimated $75 billion in 2024."Zuckerberg is signaling to the market he does not want to be second in the AI race. The timing of the announcement was likely impacted by Stargate, which created urgency around sending a message," D.A. Davidson analyst Gil Luria said. NVIDIA'S SHARES CONTINUE TO PLUMMET AMID DEEPSEEK'S DOMINANT RUN
< Page 8 | Page 10 >