Discussing "Explosive growth in Chinese B2B AI revenue, Nvidia still 'monopolizes' the market, and the Hormuz and Jackson Hole cycles," a Goldman Sachs trader commented: "Everything seems to be going very well."

Following Nvidia's earnings season, its AI investment logic has once again received strong support.

According to the trading platform, Rich Privorotsky, a FICC and equity trader at Goldman Sachs, pointed out in a market briefing on the 27th that from the explosive growth of B-end revenue of Chinese AI companies to Nvidia's optimistic guidance on future growth, to the marginal improvement in the situation in the Strait of Hormuz and the mild expectations of the Jackson Hole meeting, multiple positive factors have combined to put the overall market risk appetite in a "quite reasonable" position.

Nvidia subsequently confirmed this assessment with its actions. On Thursday, Nvidia's stock price surged 8.7% in a single day, marking its largest single-day gain since April 2025, and its market capitalization soared by $442 billion, second only to Microsoft's record of $450 billion set in July of this year.

According to Privorotsky, the most noteworthy signal this week may not be Nvidia itself, but rather the structural shift in Chinese AI demand—the decline in inference costs has not suppressed computing power demand, but is instead unlocking larger-scale actual usage. Meanwhile, diplomatic progress in the Strait of Hormuz and the moderate tone of the Jackson Hole meeting together create a macroeconomic backdrop that allows the market to "continue its upward grind."

China's AI: B2B Revenue Explodes, Inference Demand Far Exceeds Expectations

Privorotsky considers the latest financial data from Chinese AI companies to be one of the most valuable signals of this earnings season.

MiniMax's revenue grew 283% year-over-year to $116.6 million in the first half of the year, but more importantly, its revenue structure changed: enterprise/API revenue surged 703% year-over-year, accounting for 63% of total revenue. Token consumption in July was 20 times that of January, and annualized recurring revenue (ARR) in August reportedly exceeded $800 million, with approximately 80% coming from B2B business.

SenseTime exhibits a similar growth trajectory: total revenue increased by 23% year-on-year, generative AI revenue increased by 28%, accounting for nearly 80% of the group's total revenue, recurring revenue increased by 124%, and gross profit margin continued to expand.

Meanwhile, Zhipu AI officially confirmed that its mysterious model "Ox Alpha" is actually GLM-5.3-Flash, which has topped the online usage charts. Priced at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.50 per million output tokens for multimodal inference and agent tasks, it rivals DeepSeek, jointly driving the widespread adoption of ultra-low-cost, high-efficiency models.

Privorotsky's core assessment is that China's demand for AI is real and is increasingly manifesting in production-level workloads, rather than just at the model deployment level. "The decline in inference costs hasn't stifled the demand for computing power; on the contrary, it's unlocking a significant increase in usage. This is crucial to the hardware debate."

Nvidia: No "black swan" events in its performance; impressive scale of its financing ecosystem.

Nvidia's second-quarter revenue grew 106% year-over-year, with its data center business growing 117%. Third-quarter revenue guidance exceeded market expectations, and management forecasts revenue growth of approximately 70% for FY28. Profit margins were slightly below some investors' expectations, but Privorotsky believes there are no substantial negative factors.

The stock price movement confirmed this assessment—the stock price initially fell during the earnings call, but then rebounded sharply, ultimately rising by 8.7% in a single day.

Privorotsky is particularly interested in Nvidia’s financing structure built around its ecosystem: the company disclosed a third-party financing platform of over $500 billion (leveraged through private credit partners), with residual value support covering up to 25% of a single opportunity; total future commitments currently amount to approximately $366 billion; and additional guarantee structures surrounding customer infrastructure.

"What's impressive is that they put all of this out in the open, and the stock price didn't fall. I think this transparency actually had a positive effect."

Software: Salesforce proves AI can be monetized, not just "ruined".

Privorotsky believes the software sector is undergoing a reinvention, not its demise. Salesforce shares rose approximately 12% to 14% in after-hours trading, following a 14% increase in second-quarter cRPO (current remaining obligations) at constant currency, 11% revenue growth, strong profit margins and cash generation, and management raising its full-year outlook.

He pointed out that the original short-sighted logic of software was that AI would commoditize the application layer and destroy pricing power. Salesforce is demonstrating another possibility—"existing software vendors can embed AI into their proprietary data, workflows, and distribution channels and reprice their existing customer base."

"There's still a lot to prove, but this is the kind of earnings report that can start to fix software valuation multiples." He also cautioned that Salesforce's earnings per share also benefit from non-operating income from private equity investments, which needs to be distinguished.

Hormuz: Diplomatic progress has been limited; oil prices and European gas remain key variables.

The Qatari prime minister is traveling to Tehran to seek mediation as Iran and Oman continue negotiations on a framework for navigation control in the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard claims to have reached an agreement on control and revenue sharing, but other Iranian sources indicate the negotiations are not yet finalized.

Privorotsky remained cautious: "I will not declare victory." He believes that some form of joint maritime responsibility arrangement is currently the closest option to a viable solution, but this also leaves Iran with room to maneuver in the event of a deterioration in relations and tighten control over the strait again.

From a market perspective, there is still a significant gap in implementation – only five cargo ships passed through the strait on Tuesday, compared to a 10-day average of 15. He specifically pointed out that although crude oil prices have fallen somewhat, European natural gas prices remain high and warrant continued attention.

Jackson Hole and Inflation: The Known Unknowns, No Need for Excessive Concern

July's core PCE rose 0.2455% month-over-month, slightly higher than Goldman Sachs' economic research team (GIR) expectations. However, the excess mainly came from the air transport and healthcare sub-sectors, as well as portfolio management fees driven up by the lagged effect of Q2 stock prices—the latter expected to be significantly revised after the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) updates its methodology next month. Privorotsky's assessment was: "Not perfect data, but clearly not the start of a new round of inflationary pressures."

Regarding Jackson Hole, GIR expects Fed Chairman Warsh's speech on Friday to not send a strong signal about the September policy meeting . He may acknowledge recent improvements in inflation, reiterate the 2% target, and discuss macroeconomic issues such as productivity and global shocks, but will not provide clear policy guidance. GIR interprets this as the better inflation data in June and July reinforcing the case for maintaining the current policy stance.

Privorotsky was quite relaxed about it: "That sounds neutral to dovish—what are we worried about?" His baseline scenario was that Jackson Hole would be "give a push and nothing happens."

Overall Risk Assessment: A Brush to the Top, Oil Prices and Nvidia are Key Factors

Taking all these factors into account, Privorotsky's overall assessment is: if by the end of this week Nvidia's demand forecast remains strong, Chinese AI inference demand continues to surge, Salesforce proves that software can monetize AI, the July PCE figures are as expected, the Federal Reserve has no intention of suppressing growth, and the Hormuz index continues to improve—"this feels like a fairly reasonable outcome."

He also mentioned that with Monday being a bank holiday in the UK and the natural transition to Labour Day following it, the market preference remains "to continue grinding upwards" in the absence of new information.

Regarding key variables, he listed the progress of oil prices, Nvidia's performance on the day and whether the semiconductor sector can follow suit, as well as MSCI's month-end rebalancing (which theoretically supports momentum and risk assets) as key indicators to watch.

"There are many things to worry about, but Jackson Hole is increasingly becoming another 'known unknown' that we just need to turn the page on."

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The above content is from Zhuifeng Trading Platform .

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