Nvidia announced Monday that it has authorized an additional $150 billion for its share repurchase program, bringing its total buyback authorization to $235 billion — while CEO Jensen Huang publicly broke with U.S. government officials over the contentious issue of AI model distillation.
The company said the expanded buyback marks the largest share repurchase authorization increase in history and expects to complete the total remaining program through fiscal 2028.
Huang framed the announcement in the context of Nvidia's long-term cash generation outlook. "NVIDIA's growth is being driven by a once-in-a-generation platform shift to AI and accelerated computing," he said in a statement. "Our cash generation gives us the capacity to invest in the technologies that advance this transformation and return capital to shareholders. This authorization reflects our confidence in the long-term opportunity ahead."
Nvidia's shares were up 2.8% on Monday. The stock has climbed 24% over the past 12 months, lifting the company's market cap to $5.42 trillion.
The buyback expansion comes as AI infrastructure spending accelerates sharply. Combined hyperscaler capital expenditure is projected to exceed $1.3 trillion by 2027, according to S&P Global Ratings figures cited in August, as cloud and technology companies race to build out data centers capable of supporting large-scale AI workloads.
Huang reiterated an outlook he offered earlier this month — that Nvidia would double the number of chips it sells in 2027. "I think we're going through the largest infrastructure build-out in human history, and we have the benefit of being a very central part of that," he told CNBC's Squawk Box on Monday. "We're going to generate a lot of cash in the coming years, and every single year, as we generate more cash, we'd like to be able to return it back to shareholders."
Nvidia's product portfolio spans graphics processing units — including the Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems — as well as central processors, switch chips, optical networking chips, laptop chips, Jetson chips for robotics and automotive applications, and the chip inside Nintendo's Switch 2 gaming console.
Separately on Monday, Huang publicly diverged from the White House on AI model distillation — the practice of training one AI model on the outputs of another. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described distillation as "theft" in July and threatened sanctions against overseas companies using the technique to extract capability from U.S.-built models.
Huang rejected that framing in remarks to CNBC's Squawk Box. "That's called competition," he said when asked whether distillation constituted robbery. "You're allowed to test somebody else's products all you want."
He acknowledged the practice cuts both ways. "I'd really prefer they didn't," Huang said of companies that strip Nvidia's products "down to bones" to study how they work. "I'd really prefer that nobody learns from our products, and we have the benefit of just cruising along. But, you know, frankly, competition makes everything better."
Huang also offered a practical remedy for companies that object to distillation. "If you don't like that, if you don't like people to use your products, all you [have to do is] know your customers, and disable the service," he said.
U.S. officials have escalated their rhetoric on the issue. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency accused Chinese AI companies earlier this month of conducting "industrial-scale knowledge distillation campaigns" that violated U.S. companies' terms of use. Anthropic said it found Alibaba — which develops the Qwen family of models — and DeepSeek both engaging in "illicit distillation." China has rejected those claims. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Huang's remarks place Nvidia in a delicate position: the company is simultaneously the primary beneficiary of U.S. AI infrastructure spending and a firm with significant exposure to global markets, including customers whose practices are now the subject of federal scrutiny. How policymakers respond to that divergence will be a key variable to watch in the months ahead.
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