TLDR:
- Nvidia’s stock target raised to $185 by Melius Research, suggesting 26% upside
- Blackwell GPU launch compared to Apple’s first iPhone moment
- Nvidia’s market cap exceeds $3.5 trillion after 800% surge since ChatGPT release
- New Blackwell platform shows 2.2x performance improvement per GPU on LLM benchmarks
- Platform reduces GPU requirements from 256 to 64 for GPT-3 tasks compared to previous generation
Nvidia’s stock continues its upward trajectory as analysts point to groundbreaking performance improvements in its upcoming Blackwell GPU platform. Melius Research has set a new price target of $185 for the chip maker, representing a potential 26% increase from current levels.
The technology giant’s stock has experienced remarkable growth, soaring nearly 800% since OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in November 2022. This surge has propelled Nvidia to become the world’s largest company by market capitalization, now exceeding $3.5 trillion.
Recent MLPerf Training 4.1 benchmarks reveal that the Blackwell platform achieves up to 2.2 times more performance per GPU when handling large language model workloads. This improvement is particularly evident in tasks involving Llama 2 70B fine-tuning and GPT-3 175B pretraining.
The enhanced efficiency of the Blackwell architecture is demonstrated by its ability to run GPT-3 LLM benchmarks using just 64 GPUs, compared to the 256 GPUs required by its predecessor, the Hopper platform. This four-fold reduction in GPU requirements marks a major advance in processing efficiency.
Ben Reitzes, managing director at Melius Research, draws parallels between Nvidia’s current position and Apple’s early iPhone days. He suggests that selling Nvidia stock now would be similar to selling Apple shares after the release of their first iPhone.
The company’s Hopper and upcoming Blackwell GPU chips serve as the foundation for various AI applications, from chatbots to text-to-video conversion and autonomous vehicles. Major cloud providers, government entities, and large enterprises continue to invest heavily in this technology.
Nvidia’s financial outlook appears strong, with Melius Research projecting gross margins to reach the mid-70s by mid-FY26. The company is expected to earn more than $5 per share in profits by 2027, a forecast that analysts now consider conservative.
From a valuation perspective, Nvidia’s stock shows promise. The company’s CY2025 PEG ratio stands at approximately 0.8x, which is 33% lower than competitor Broadcom and the lowest among the Magnificent Seven tech stocks.
Technical improvements in the Blackwell platform include optimized kernels for Tensor Cores, which are essential for deep learning calculations. These enhancements enable higher compute throughput per GPU, supported by larger and faster high-bandwidth memory.
The company continues to refine its existing platforms through software development. The Hopper platform has shown a 1.3x improvement in GPT-3 175B per-GPU training performance since the benchmark’s introduction.
Large-scale testing has demonstrated impressive results using 11,616 Hopper GPUs, connected via NVIDIA NVLink and NVSwitch, combined with Quantum-2 InfiniBand networking. This configuration has more than tripled both scale and performance on the GPT-3 175B benchmark compared to last year.
Major technology partners, including ASUSTek, Azure, Cisco, Dell, and Fujitsu, have submitted strong results to MLPerf, validating Nvidia’s performance claims. As a founding member of MLCommons, Nvidia maintains its commitment to industry-standard benchmarks in AI computing.
The stock is currently trading at $149.77 per share, up 197% year-to-date and slightly below its all-time high. The company’s year-to-date performance reflects continued investor confidence in Nvidia’s technological leadership and market position.
Stay Ahead of the Market with Benzinga Pro!
Want to trade like a pro? Benzinga Pro gives you the edge you need in today's fast-paced markets. Get real-time news, exclusive insights, and powerful tools trusted by professional traders:
- Breaking market-moving stories before they hit mainstream media
- Live audio squawk for hands-free market updates
- Advanced stock scanner to spot promising trades
- Expert trade ideas and on-demand support
