AI Extinction Fears Could Crush Nvidia’s $1.3 Trillion Growth Engine, but Don’t Panic Sell Just Yet

AI Extinction Fears Could Crush Nvidia’s $1. 3 Trillion Growth Engine, but Don’t Panic Sell Just Yet Rich Duprey Tue, September 15, 2026 at 1:30 PM GMT+2 4 min read NVDA Nvidia (NVDA) has become almost synonymous with the artificial intelligence boom because its increasingly powerful GPUs have supplied the computing muscle needed to train and run increasingly capable models. The numbers show how dependent the boom has become on that hardware.

Nvidia generated $96. 2 billion of revenue in its fiscal 2027 second quarter, up 106% year-over-year (YoY), while data center revenue reached $89 billion, up 117%. Nvidia's fiscal 2026 revenue was $215.

9 billion, up 65%. More News from Barchart Goldman Sachs Expects Fed Chair Kevin Warsh to Raise Rates This Week — But Not Because of Oil Prices. Morgan Stanley Doubles Down on Apple Stock as New Offerings Become 'More Exciting' The EV Bubble Has Burst.

How to Play Rivian Stock Now. Markets move fast. Keep up by reading our FREE midday Barchart Brief newsletter for exclusive charts, analysis, and headlines.

That growth reflects a feedback loop: Better GPUs allow AI developers to train larger models, which creates demand for still more computing power. Nvidia's latest Blackwell systems are now being joined by its Vera Rubin architecture, with the company expecting fiscal 2028 revenue to grow about 70%. Yet last week, the conversation about AI changed almost overnight.

While nothing about this safety debate changes those numbers overnight, it could challenge the assumption underneath them—that AI capabilities will keep advancing at today's pace. www. barchart.

com AI Safety Concerns Are Getting Harder to Ignore The concern became more tangible this week after former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned and warned that AI developers were racing toward self-improving systems without adequate safeguards. More strikingly, Anthropic's alignment-science lead Evan Hubinger publicly said he personally believes there is a greater than 10% chance AI could kill all humans within the next decade. Wired reported that current and former AI researchers echoed concerns that the industry is approaching a critical period for controlling increasingly autonomous systems.

That is not a forecast investors can plug into an earnings model. It is, however, evidence that concerns about AI safety are no longer confined to outside critics. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responded by calling for the industry to "pace the frontier"—slowing the improvement of AI models until safety measures can catch up.

His proposal includes independent evaluators with access inside AI companies, coordination among frontier developers, and international cooperation. Anthropic has committed to the evaluator approach. Story Continues OpenAI CEO Sam Altman backed the idea, saying OpenAI would also use independent evaluators and agreeing that the frontier needs to be paced.

A Slowdown Would Hit Nvidia Through Its Customers This is where the issue becomes an Nvidia investment story. Nvidia does not need AI companies to stop spending for its growth to suffer. It only needs the rate of spending to slow.

The company's latest 10-Q shows just how concentrated the opportunity has become. Nvidia's Compute & Networking segment generated $88. 3 billion of the $96.

2 billion quarterly total, while the company said growth was driven by data center products for accelerated computing and AI. Nvidia's own earnings call also highlighted the scale of the spending cycle. The company said the top five hyperscalers are expected to spend nearly $800 billion on capital expenditures in 2026 and $1.

3 trillion in 2027. A coordinated slowdown would not necessarily eliminate that spending. Data centers will still need GPUs, existing AI applications will still run, and companies will still compete for technological advantages.

But investors should recognize the asymmetry. Nvidia's current valuation and earnings trajectory require extraordinary AI infrastructure growth to continue. If safety concerns delay frontier models, reduce training intensity, or push developers toward more efficient systems, some of the industry's appetite for ever-larger GPU clusters could be deferred.

That would not destroy Nvidia's business. It could, however, puncture the growth expectations that have made the stock such a powerful AI proxy. Key Takeaway In short, fears that AI could become uncontrollable are a legitimate new risk for Nvidia—but they are not yet an investment thesis for selling the stock.

The bigger threat is a prolonged shift from "build as fast as possible" to "prove it's safe before building more. " Nvidia's $89 billion quarterly data center business shows how much money is riding on continued acceleration. Smart investors should watch AI spending commitments, model-release schedules, and new safety requirements more closely than extinction forecasts—at least for now.

If the AI race merely becomes more controlled, Nvidia can keep growing. If the race itself starts slowing or ends up derailing, the company's earnings trajectory could eventually feel the impact. On the date of publication, Rich Duprey did not have (either directly or indirectly) positions in any of the securities mentioned in this article.

All information and data in this article is solely for informational purposes. This article was originally published on Barchart.