Why Is Nvidia Stock Moving Today? NVDA on Oct 19-20, 2026: Modal CPU Win, $35 Billion China Orders, Germany Deals

Nvidia stock edged lower before the open on Tuesday, October 20, 2026, after Reuters reported that ByteDance, Alibaba and Tencent had ordered more than 3 million of its RTX PRO 5500 graphics cards, worth over $35 billion, and that Nvidia may fill only a small part of those orders. The report reached the MoveSurge news feed at 05:00:00 ET with NVDA at $216.15, and ten minutes later the stock was at $215.89, down 0.12%. The larger measured move came on Monday, when AI cloud provider Modal said it will run AI agents on Nvidia's Vera central processors. NVDA rose 0.90% in the ten minutes after that headline.

The China orders

The RTX PRO 5500 is an export-compliant workstation card. People familiar with the orders told Reuters that buyers in China have lined up more than 6 million units, while Nvidia's output of the card for 2027 is capped at about 3 million, and one source said partners may receive only 5% to 10% of the quantities they requested. A second crossing of the report at 05:03:51 ET measured a 0.23% fall in ten minutes, from $216.29 to $215.80.

The Modal CPU win

Modal had run its AI agent workloads only on Intel and AMD processors. It is adding servers built on Nvidia's Vera CPU and keeping its Intel and AMD machines in a mixed fleet, and its own early tests showed about twice the agent throughput of its current chips. The headline crossed at 10:10:22 ET on October 19 with NVDA at $215.68. The stock was at $215.95 a minute later, up 0.13%, and at $217.63 after ten minutes, up 0.90%. It kept rising to $218.26 by 10:25 ET, 1.20% above the price before the headline. AMD rose 0.79% over the same ten minutes, to $545.32 from $541.05.

Germany and GTC Berlin

At the Invest in Germany summit in Berlin on October 19 and 20, Chancellor Friedrich Merz and two federal ministries signed a declaration of intent with Nvidia on physical AI, the models that run robots, machines and cars. Nvidia also named four German startups it plans to invest in: Agile Robots, Avelios Medical, Mirelo and Reflex Aerospace. It did not disclose the amounts. That headline crossed at 15:50:56 ET on October 19, nine minutes before the close, with NVDA at $217.88, and a minute later the stock was at $217.20, down 0.31%. Earlier that day, before the open, a headline on Siemens and Nvidia's work on AI-run factories crossed at 07:59:40 ET, and NVDA rose 0.29% in the following ten minutes, to $218.22 from $217.59. Jensen Huang gives the keynote at Nvidia's GTC Berlin conference on October 21.

Nvidia's dated catalysts

1. September 14, 2026: Nvidia closed at $210.96, down 3.36%, after Anthropic's Dario Amodei and OpenAI's Sam Altman called for slower frontier AI development.
2. October 19, 2026: Modal adds Nvidia's Vera CPU; Nvidia signs the German declaration of intent and names four startup investments.
3. October 20, 2026: Reuters reports more than $35 billion of Chinese orders for the RTX PRO 5500.
4. October 21, 2026: Jensen Huang's GTC Berlin keynote.