Nvidia investors can’t catch a break this year.
One thing after another seems to be knocking shares lower. If the pressure isn’t coming from competing Chinese AI models, it’s being applied by President Trump as he announces more tariffs on Nvidia-adjacent industries.
And that’s not to mention the stock’s status as one of the most valuable companies in the world, and a headlining member of the vaunted Magnificent 7. Its rapid increase over the past few years has only been rivaled by the major declines it experiences during times of market turbulence.
Nvidia’s rocky year continued on Wednesday as shares fell as much as 7% after the company said that it expects to take a $5.5 billion earnings hit because of Chinese tariffs levied by Trump.
The stock is now down 20% year-to-date and off about 30% from its January peak. Those losses far outpace the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100, which is down 12% in 2025.
Investors in Nvidia — formerly the market’s foremost darling — are being forced to come to grips with the stock’s position at the epicenter of multiple headwinds.
“Nvidia has found itself in the middle of many crosscurrents this year,” Paul Hickey, co-founder of Bespoke Investment Group, told BI on Wednesday.
Detailed below are three major forces holding Nvidia back in 2025:
1. “A victim of its own success”
This ultimately boils down to Nvidia’s sheer size and weighting in major indexes, which has resulted from the stock’s eye-watering climb in recent years.
Now that it’s one of the most valuable companies in the world, and the clear leader of the AI-chip revolution, expectations have been ratcheted up. After all, Nvidia has grown its annual revenue by 383% since the release of ChatGPT in November 2022.
“The stock has become a victim of its own success where the exponential growth following the release of ChatGPT became unsustainable given how large sales had become,” Hickey said.
2. AI incursions
The first warning of a potential slowdown in Nvidia’s growth rate was the release of a large-language model from China, named DeepSeek.
DeepSeek was significant in that it utilized nuanced efficiency gains that helped boost performance on par with mainstream GPTs, all while using significantly less computing power.
The swift decline in Nvidia stock was almost fully recovered in mid-February, as tech CEOs spun DeepSeek’s efficiency gains as a reason why AI should evolve even quicker.
But that recovery was severely dented after Nvidia reported its earnings results in late February, which included guidance that failed to meet Wall Street’s most lofty projections.
3. Toxic tariff impact
After earnings, tariff worries weighed on Nvidia stock, as it sources most of its chips from overseas factories, mainly Taiwan Semiconductor.
And now investors have to worry about the US government levying export restrictions on Nvidia’s H20 chip, which was specifically designed for the Chinese market as a watered down AI GPU.
All together, this weighs on Nvidia’s ability to continue to post eye-popping growth rates in its upcoming earnings release.
“We acknowledge that this news could impact NVDA Jul-Q guide’s ability to beat street estimates comfortably,” analysts at Citi said in a note on Wednesday.
These issues only compounded investor worries about the stock.
“The stock’s problems started way before DeepSeek and tariffs, but these issues haven’t helped as they only create more doubt as to the sustainability of its torrid growth rate,” Hickey said.