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4 AI terms Nvidia investors should know

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4 AI terms Nvidia investors should know

Despite some volatility in the stock market so far in August, Nvidia stock (NVDA) remains up over 150% this year.

Driving the stock is Nvidia’s role in supplying chips to major tech giants like Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Microsoft (MSFT) that are crucial for artificial intelligence technology amid the broader generative AI boom.

Over a third of the S&P 500 (^GSPC) market cap gains in the first half of 2024 could be attributed to Nvidia. For some investors, the concentration of gains in a few stocks such as Nvidia seems risky. It was a point that was underlined earlier this month by a stock rout that briefly pushed the volatility index (^VIX) above 60 and shares of Nvidia down by as much as 10%.

Stocks ended up recovering, but the period offered a reminder to investors that they could seek AI opportunities elsewhere.

For those looking to gain an edge and diversify their tech holdings, understanding AI’s core technology and terminology is essential.

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Here’s a breakdown of a few of the terms you need to know to invest in the AI boom:

Inference

Inference is AI’s moment of truth. It’s when an AI model like ChatGPT generates an answer to a prompt based on its previous training and learning. The quality of an AI system’s inference relies heavily on its underlying technology stack, including the powerful chips that drive it.

FILE - President and CEO of Nvidia Corporation Jensen Huang delivers a speech during the Computex 2024 exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, June 2, 2024. A rebound for Nvidia on Tuesday, June 25, 2024, is helping keep U.S. indexes close to their records Tuesday. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying)

President and CEO of Nvidia Corporation Jensen Huang delivers a speech during the Computex 2024 exhibition in Taipei, Taiwan, on June 2, 2024. (AP Photo/Chiang Ying-ying) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Compute

Compute power is the driving force behind an AI system’s success, similar to how horsepower propels a car. The greater the compute power, the more efficient and faster the inference process becomes.

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Processing power, memory, and storage all fuel compute power, and chipmakers tend to focus on increased compute power for new chip releases because improvements in compute power with each chip generation could allow companies to charge more, which typically bodes well for future profit margins.

GPUs

Graphics processing units, or GPUs, are advanced and expensive chips that power AI. Their quality can help determine the speed of AI computations. Nvidia, which began working on GPUs in the ’90s, owns over 80% of the GPU market and mentioned the term 19 times in its first quarter earnings presentation. Nvidia’s GPUs have increased AI inference performance by a thousand times over the last decade.

Hyperscalers

Big Tech companies like Microsoft, Alphabet (GOOG, GOOGL), Meta (META), and Amazon are considered hyperscalers, or those capable of rapidly scaling AI. With products and services such as Microsoft’s Copilot, Alphabet’s Gemini, and Meta’s Llama, these companies are significant both as consumers of AI chips and competitors to chipmakers.

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Finance

Newly appointed director of finance for Halifax County has now resigned

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Newly appointed director of finance for Halifax County has now resigned

The newly appointed director of finance for Halifax County has now resigned from the post, citing comments that she believes are questioning her integrity.

On Monday, supervisors named the school system’s finance director, Dr. Karen Bucklew, to also serve as the county’s interim finance director.

RELATED: Halifax County Schools finance director to assist county as interim finance director

In her resignation letter, Bucklew cites public comments from members of the board and to the media regarding whether serving both entities is a conflict of interest.

The letter lays out her professional and ethical standards, and said the comments have eroded the professional working environment, so she will remain as the school’s finance director only.

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Bluespring adds $2.3bn in assets with SHP Financial purchase  

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Bluespring adds .3bn in assets with SHP Financial purchase  

Bluespring Wealth Partners has purchased SHP Financial, a firm based in Massachusetts that manages about $2.3bn in assets for mass-affluent and high-net-worth clients.  

Financial specifics of the deal remain undisclosed.  

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SHP Financial was established in 2003 by Derek L. Gregoire, Matthew C. Peck, and Keith W. Ellis Jr., who began their financial careers together in the insurance sector. 

The company employs around 50 staff across three offices in Plymouth, Woburn, and Hyannis. Its team includes seven advisers and 18 other financial services professionals. 

The firm is known for providing fiduciary advice and offers services such as its SHP Retirement Road Map, aimed at making retirement planning more accessible to clients. 

Peck said: “We are deeply protective of the culture we’ve built over the last two decades and were intentional about choosing a partner we felt could help us fuel SHP’s next stage of growth while helping us remain true to our goals. 

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“And we found that partner in Bluespring. We believe Bluespring can provide the resources and support needed to grow and invest in our team, while preserving the client experience that defines SHP.” 

In 2025, Bluespring added over $6bn in assets under management to its business. 

Bluespring president Pradeep Jayaraman commented: “SHP is a team that has already built meaningful scale and is still hungry to grow. That’s what makes this an acceleration story, as opposed to a transition story.  

“SHP’s founders are seasoned leaders in the prime of their careers, still deeply engaged in their business, with decades of success yet ahead.  

Last month, Bluespring added Coghill Investment Strategies, managing around $600m in assets, to its network. 

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Oregon Democrats’ campaign finance proposal would establish spending limits, push back other provisions

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Oregon Democrats’ campaign finance proposal would establish spending limits, push back other provisions

The Oregon State Capitol in Salem, Ore. on Monday, Feb 2, 2026.

Saskia Hatvany / OPB

State leaders are trying to stand up a law to massively overhaul Oregon’s campaign finance system.

Now, two years after the original bill’s passage, a new proposal would limit political contributions before the next general election as planned, but give the Secretary of State more time to launch a required system to track spending.

An amended bill, unveiled Monday evening, is shining a spotlight on the divide between the politically powerful labor and business groups who support it and good government advocates who are accusing state leaders of trying to skirt the intent of the original legislation.

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House Bill 4018, which saw its first public hearing Tuesday morning, comes as state officials seek to prop up the campaign finance bill passed in 2024. Since then, state leaders have been jockeying over how best to quickly set up the bill for Oregon’s elections. For years, the state has not capped political giving.

State elections officials have warned repeatedly that the legislation from 2024 was flawed and that Oregon was barreling toward a failed implementation. The Oregon Secretary of State says it needs far more money — potentially $25 million — to keep things on schedule.

In addition to a dizzying array of technical changes, the new bill gives the state more time to create an online system to better monitor and track political spending and giving. It would move the start date from 2028 to 2032.

The bill maintains the original plan of capping political donations by businesses, political committees, interest groups, labor unions and other citizens by 2027.

“If our goal is to strengthen trust in democracy, we cannot afford a rollout that undermines confidence in government’s ability to deliver,” Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read said in testimony supporting the bill on Tuesday.

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“Oregonians deserve campaign finance reform that works, not just on paper, but in practice,” said Read. “They deserve a system that ends unlimited contributions. HB 4018 is a step closer to achieving that goal by preserving the key contribution limits promised to Oregonians while providing a realistic runway for the state to resolve the more complex reporting and transparency issues.”

Rep. Julie Fahey (D-Eugene), right,  and Rep. Lucetta (R-McMinnville) attend a legislative preview for the press on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026 in Salem, Ore.

Rep. Julie Fahey (D-Eugene), right, and Rep. Lucetta (R-McMinnville) attend a legislative preview for the press on Wednesday, Jan. 28, 2026 in Salem, Ore.

Saskia Hatvany / OPB

House Speaker Julie Fahey, who proposed the bill, believes it “addresses the most urgent needs of our campaign finance system,” a spokesperson for the Lane County Democrat said. For the tracking system, the bill “will give the Secretary of State the time needed to build it carefully, test it thoroughly, and roll it out without risking problems in the middle of a major election.”

The bill has the backing of labor groups such as the Oregon Nurses Association, Oregon AFSCME, Oregon AFL-CIO and the Oregon Restaurant & Lodging Association. Republican leaders have yet to chime in.

“Oregon is fighting hard for a transparent, robust, and intact democracy against a challenging national landscape from federal threats and corporate power. Fair elections are the foundation of this,” said Harper Haverkamp, of the American Federation of Teachers — Oregon. “The upcoming rollout of recently passed campaign finance reforms is something for us to look forward to — but the rollout must be done right.”

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Campaign finance advocates offered a withering view of the proposal on Tuesday, saying they were excluded from discussions around crafting the bill and calling on lawmakers to reject the bill. In written testimony, one of them urged lawmakers to “Stop kicking the can down the road.”

The bill “massively changes [the 2024 bill] to come very close to making the contribution limits and disclosure requirements illusory,” Dan Meek, a Portland attorney and campaign finance reform advocate, said in Tuesday’s public hearing.

Among other things, he added, the bill would delay disclosure requirements by three years. It would also only restrict a group’s contribution to a campaign if the Secretary of State’s office determined that a single person had created them with the intent of evading limits, “which will be very difficult to prove,” he noted.

“This is another stealth attempt by legislative leadership and the big campaign contributors to do an end run around on campaign finance reform, before it’s set to be implemented,” Kate Titus, the executive director of Common Cause Oregon, said in a statement to OPB Tuesday.

The bill is scheduled for another public hearing on Thursday.

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