What We Learned This Week

Rebuild Progressing: Nike’s turnaround has been underway for about a year now under CEO Elliott Hill, and it was never going to be a smooth process. The company has had to reset core elements of its strategy, from reworking its product focus to rebuilding relationships with wholesale partners it had largely walked away from. Layer in inflation, shifting trade dynamics, and a more cautious global consumer, and the task only gets harder. The latest earnings update reflected that tension. On the positive side, the U.S. business is showing signs of improvement, with sales stabilizing and new product launches gaining traction. The renewed emphasis on athletes, performance, and a cleaner product portfolio is exactly the direction investors have been hoping to see.

The challenges, however, remain meaningful. China continues to be a drag, reflecting both a weak consumer environment and broader geopolitical strain, and that’s a market Nike can’t simply ignore. Tariffs are another headwind, proving larger and more persistent than initially expected, and while production shifts are underway, those changes take time. With the stock having run up into earnings, those pressures dominated the immediate reaction. That said, the signal after the report was notable: the CEO and multiple board members stepped in to buy shares personally, typically a strong vote of confidence. The core fundamentals that needed fixing (product relevance, brand positioning, and retail strategy) are clearly in motion. The biggest negatives are largely external, cyclical forces that tend to ebb and flow. If and when they ease, it’s the underlying progress that will ultimately matter.

Nvidia’s Next Gen: This week’s CES show in Las Vegas offered a glimpse at what’s coming next in tech, and as usual, Nvidia was front and center. The company unveiled its next-generation Vera Rubin chipset, set to replace last year’s Blackwell architecture. The pace of advancement is striking. Each new generation makes the last feel almost obsolete. While the technical details are dense, the practical takeaway is simple: these chips dramatically improve the speed and cost efficiency of AI model inference, on the order of several times faster and meaningfully cheaper. That matters less for individual consumers today and far more for the companies building on top of the technology. As AI infrastructure costs fall, these tools become easier to embed everywhere, which helps explain why Nvidia continues to sell virtually everything it can produce.

Nvidia also used CES to push further into autonomous driving, announcing a new suite of AI models, software blueprints, and datasets designed to enable Level 4 autonomy under defined conditions. The first production vehicle expected to use the platform is the upcoming Mercedes CLA, slated to launch in the U.S. later this year. Early testing suggests the system is competitive, though broader adoption and real-world performance will ultimately determine how it stacks up against Tesla and Waymo. Beyond that, Nvidia showcased a range of other consumer-facing technologies, reinforcing how broadly it is extending its reach. The common thread is clear: Nvidia continues to expand well beyond chips alone, positioning itself as a foundational layer across AI, mobility, and computing.