Since closing at $878.3 on Friday, Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) stock climbed by nearly 2% this week after its much-anticipated GTC AI-focused conference kicked off on Monday. The upswing comes after the company announced a range of new AI technologies and offerings during the first two days of the event.
As a result, NVDA received a string of fresh price target (PT) hikes by Wall Street analysts.
Key GTC updates
In his keynote speech, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang introduced a range of technologies, from the Blackwell platform to a foundational model for humanoid robots, among others.
Blackwell, designed to empower organizations to develop and deploy real-time generative captured most of the spotlight.
This platform supports trillion-parameter large language models with up to 25x reduction in cost and energy use compared to previous models.
It utilizes a custom 4NP TSMC process and includes a unique chip-to-chip link that merges two GPU dies, resulting in a GPU that houses 208 billion transistors.
This new GPU architecture from Blackwell incorporates six advanced technologies aimed at boosting performance in data processing, engineering simulation, electronic design automation, drug development, quantum computing, and GenAI.
As part of the Blackwell architecture, Nvidia introduced its most powerful AI chip yet, named the B200.
According to Huang, a Blackwell GPU will cost in the range of $30,000 to $40,000. He said the company spent $10 billion to develop this new powerful product.
Moreover, Nvidia unveiled new software tools aimed at easing developers' efforts to deploy AI models for businesses leveraging Nvidia technology.
Among those is the Nvidia Inference Microservice (NIM), a software designed to optimize the use of older Nvidia GPUs for AI tasks. Put differently, NIM enables companies to efficiently use the vast number of Nvidia GPUs they already own.
Several other products and services were announced by the chipmaking behemoth, including the NVIDIA 6G Research Cloud platform, which is designed to support the development of advanced AI in radio access network technology, and Project GR00T, a foundational model for humanoid robotics aiming to accelerate innovations in robotics and embodied AI.
In addition, the company unveiled Jetson Thor, a specialized computer for humanoid robots based on the NVIDIA Thor SoC, and launched over two dozen new microservices to help healthcare enterprises globally leverage the latest in generative AI technology across any cloud.
Analysts raise targets
It is safe to say that Nvidia’s GTC announcements have been continuously making headlines over the past two days.
In response, analysts on Wall Street have welcomed the company’s commitment “to power this new industrial revolution” with a series of price target hikes.
Deutsche Bank analysts raised the target price from $720 to $850, saying NVDA “reinforced its reputation as the top enabler of AI innovation.”
“The introduction of its newest GPU platform "Blackwell" has been long awaited, and, in our view, should help extend the co's technology leadership advantage for years to come,” they said.
Goldman Sachs analysts hiked the PT on Nvidia stock to $1,000 and kept the Buy-rated stock on its Conviction List.
Meanwhile, Piper Sandler’s team lifted the PT to $1,050 from $850.
“We view the new architecture as an expansion of the already dominant market positioning of NVDA's hardware offering. We maintain that NVDA is the leading company in offering the full hardware and software stack to address the decade long transition to accelerated computing and generative AI,” they noted.
Nvidia stock PT was also upped to $1,030 from $820 at Citi Research after the first two days of the GTC event supported the bank’s bullish views on the company.
“We came away from the first two days of GTC more positive in NVIDIA’s ability to vertically integrate its computing, networking, and software technologies with notably its new NVLink Switch technology which helps the new Blackwell Platform outperform prior H100 30x on inference workloads.”
Further, Oppenheimer analysts lifted the PT on Nvidia stock to $1,100 from $850, saying they see the chip manufacturer as “best positioned in AI benefiting from full-stack AI hardware/software solutions.”