Nvidia’s results could send shock waves through the tech sector—and the broader stock market. Chip makers are fighting to assure investors that the artificial-intelligence boom is racing forward. Wall Street might not believe it until Nvidia’s [PERSON_NAME] says so.

When [PERSON_NAME] steps up to the mic for his company’s earnings call Wednesday, he will have the world’s attention. What he says about Nvidia’s present will preview the future of AI, dictate the path forward for a tech-crazed stock market and influence an American economy increasingly tethered to hopes that the boom won’t go bust. The $5 trillion chip maker has provided the key building blocks for AI since the launch of [ADDRESS] in 2022 set off a race for dominance among Open AI, Anthropic and established [ADDRESS] giants.

Now, as Nvidia backstops sprawling data-center projects and an exotic money pipeline to boost chip demand, the company’s influence is arguably bigger than ever. But there are signs of trouble ahead. Political pushback to AI is growing.

A bond selloff propelled borrowing costs to their highest levels in years. The hyperscalers that include some of Nvidia’s key customers—once cash-printing machines—are relying more on debt. Open AI recently told investors its revenue rose by a tepid 18% in the second quarter while its losses deepened.

Nvidia is increasingly stepping in to shore up potential weak points across the market. Earlier this month, the company teamed up with six of Wall Street’s biggest firms on a $500 billion AI-financing plan, pledging to backstop lending to customers that can’t afford its chips otherwise. The chip maker last week also took a stake in Cloverleaf Infrastructure, which arranges power for data centers, and struck a $6 billion deal with startup Poolside aimed at developing a powerful open-weight AI model.

After watching shares in other chip makers and the so-called Magnificent Seven tech companies swing wildly in recent months, Wall Street is hoping Nvidia can beat expectations—again. The countdown is on."It’s kind of becoming more and more like the World Cup final than the Super Bowl at this point," said [PERSON_NAME], chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management. "It’s just gotten to be that big."The company has smashed analysts’ earnings estimates for each of the 14 quarters since the AI boom kicked into high gear. Nvidia posted 210% annual growth in net income in its last three-month period, according to Fact Set, making Wall Street’s 126% projection look pedestrian.

Expectations for a blowout second quarter have risen rapidly over the course of this year. All Nvidia will have to do to beat this target: outrun 95% annual earnings growth to more than $51.5 billion. Analysts project the chip maker will report record sales of $92 billion for the period, up from a forecast of $78 billion at the start of this year.

In July, big-tech earnings sparked volatility. Concerns about runaway capital spending spread across the sector after Alphabet’s and Tesla’s results, driving a $890 billion wipeout that contributed to the unwind of hedge fund Situational Awareness. Microsoft posted the largest one-day gain in market capitalization by any company, ever, after a quarter proving that it could still show investors the money.

Space X rocketed higher after a record-breaking initial public offering, only to see $1 trillion in value evaporate. Surging memory prices and borrowing costs have fueled fears that those and other companies will be unable to keep plowing more money into supplies including Nvidia chips. [PERSON_NAME], founder of Onyx Point Global Management, has recently bought dips in AI-infrastructure stocks when Wall Street has strained to absorb massive debt issued by [ADDRESS]."The macro data is really quite robust," he said. "Of course, there’s a level at which everything breaks."Investors have kept pumping money into the AI trade despite concerns around chip consumers—and to the benefit of chip producers. T...