In a year where artificial intelligence (AI) continues dominating headlines and enterprise spending, one might expect the sector's undisputed leader to be posting spectacular gains. Instead, Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) has delivered a surprisingly modest 2.

Nvidia reinforces its dominance through its proprietary Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA) programming platform. When software developers write their AI applications in a parallel code (such as C++ or Python) on CUDA, those applications become optimized for Nvidia's GPUs but can only be executed on its chips.

Artificial intelligence titan Nvidia will take center stage Wednesday afternoon when the company shares financial results from its quarter ending last month, and though analysts expect record-setting sales amid the AI boom,

Nvidia weathered a storm of tariff uncertainty and export controls to exceed Wall Street’s lofty expectations for sales when the AI chip behemoth reported quarterly earnings Wednesday. The hit to profits and margins came in worse than expected,

In recent times, though, against a backdrop of import tariff uncertainties and restrictions on AI chip exports to China, investors have worried about growth ahead, which has weighed on Nvidia's stock, bringing it down 29% from the start of the year to its lowest point in April.

The company faces continued uncertainty in China after the Trump administration limited certain chip sales to the country.

The rating revision follows Nvidia’s quarterly report, which demonstrated mixed outcomes. Its revenues of $44.06 billion topped the consensus estimates of $43.31 billion. However, the company missed out significantly based on the absence of H20 sales in China during the first and second quarters.

Nvidia investors took away a story of relative strength, all things considered, from the AI giant's first quarter earnings.

Despite the ban on exports to China, Nvidia posts a new record quarter. The GeForce division is growing strongly, but remains tiny compared to AI GPUs.

Read Investopedia's live updates on the AI chip giant's quarterly results, as well as the market reaction and comments from CEO Jensen Huang during the conference call with analysts.