Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights.
This article isn't about Nvidia's parabolic rise amid the AI boom. It won't dwell on the well-known fact that Nvidia's GPUs power roughly 90% of AI data centers worldwide or that tech giants like Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Meta remain deeply invested in its silicon innovations. It's not even about CUDA, Nvidia's giant competitive moat that is still relevant today.
Nor will we focus on how the stock struggled earlier this year, as investors kept raising the bar, until even spectacular results weren't good enough. And yet, Nvidia has not only reclaimed its top spot, it is trading at record highs.
The trillion-dollar question now is: Can Nvidia stock reach $200 by year-end? Or is that a stretch even for a strong compounder like the AI bellwether?
On June 25, 2025, Nvidia surged over 4%, closing at a record $154.31, reclaiming its spot as the most valuable publicly traded company (~$3.77 trillion market cap), surpassing Microsoft and Apple. The stock is even higher now, and the last closing price is $159.34, marking a stellar comeback, from Nvidia's April 4th closing low of $94.30. Nvidia stock erased more than 40% of its value between February and April of this year, not because of any failing on its part. Concerns over moderating AI spending, and unpredictable tariff policies triggered the decline.
This is not Nvidia's first rodeo either. Prior to that, DeepSeek revelations in late January created uncertainty about America's AI dominance, wiping $600 billion off Nvidia's market value in a single day. The market was simply recalibrating its perception of perfection. While DeepSeek showed promise, it is nowhere in the leagues of an established AI leader like Nvidia. So, the sell-off was unjustified in my opinion. The Nvidia stock bounced back within a month.
Last year too, Nvidia shares fell nearly 23% from mid-July through early August, closing August 7th trade at $98.88. The sell-off was triggered by fears that Nvidia's big tech customers may trim their AI spending budgets. However, Nvidia stock staged a strong recovery of more than 30% from these low levels, closing August 19 at nearly $130.
Every time a quality stock drops, the internet floods with "Should you buy the dip?" takes. My view is simple: Study the cause. If the sell-off happened for reasons that can be fixed - go ahead and buy. But if it stems from deeper, structural weaknesses, then walk away. It's not like there's only one good stock out there.
Nvidia's deeply integrated AI ecosystem gives it a wide berth over competition, and its innovation remains unsurpassed. Nvidia does not think out of the box; it thinks like there is no box. That said, investor perception is everything when it comes to stock pricing. The recent rally has given reason to hope that the market may be finally waking up to the true value of this stock following a period of inflated expectations and sharp corrections.The fear of missing out (FOMO) is likely to keep the buying pressure active and drive NVDA to at least $180 by the end of this year. Of course, I could be wrong.
China is a key market for Nvidia; it represented $17 billion or 13% of Nvidia's sales for the fiscal year that ended in January. But Nvidia's market share in the region has weakened dramatically from 95% before 2022 to 50% currently after U.S. regulators tightened restrictions on selling high-end AI chips to China, citing national security concerns. To comply with the U.S. export curbs, Nvidia has been selling H20 to China. H20 is a watered-down version of its H100 chips with significantly lower computing power.
However, in April, the U.S. government tightened restrictions again, reclassifying even the scaled-down H20 as requiring an export license. The decision effectively halted shipments and dealt Nvidia a serious financial blow.
CEO Jensen Huang put it bluntly: "The H20 export ban ended our Hopper data center business in China." Calling the $50 billion Chinese AI chip market "effectively closed to the U.S. industry," Huang also warned that if U.S. export restrictions continue, more Chinese customers will turn to Huawei's chips.
I highlighted this risk in a previous article that flagged both the threat of an H20 ban and Huawei's preparation for competitive positioning, citing Jefferies and WSJ reports.
Nvidia recognized $4.6 billion in H20 revenue prior to April 9, before the new export restrictions kicked in. The financial fallout from the ban was significant. Nvidia wrote down $4.5 billion in unsold H20 inventory for the first quarter and was unable to ship an additional $2.5 billion of what would have been H20-generated revenue. Gross margin fell to 61%, versus the 71.3% it would have reported without the China-related charges. In an interview with the Stratechery podcast in May, Huang also revealed the company had to walk away from an additional $15 billion of sales. The topline guidance of $45 billion for the July quarter would have been higher by $8 billion but for the new export restrictions.
So, why is there still hope for a China rebound for Nvidia?
Nvidia is pivoting swiftly. A Reuters report citing sources familiar to the matter said Nvidia is planning to build a GPU or graphics processing unit for China based on its latest generation Blackwell-architecture AI processors that will be priced at $6,500-8,000, well below the H20's price range of $10,000-$12,000. The lower price could reflect the new export limits on GPU memory bandwidth - a metric crucial for AI workloads that require extensive data processing.
Also, recent developments suggest a thaw in the U.S.'s formerly hardline stance against China, signaling a broader shift in tone.
This gives rise to a key question: In this more conciliatory phase, is there any possibility that the U.S. could revisit its chip export restrictions to China as well?
The New York Times reported on June 27th that China confirmed details of a trade framework with the Trump administration. "China will review and approve applications for the export of controlled items," China's Ministry of Commerce said in a statement, and "the United States will correspondingly cancel a series of restrictive measures it has taken against China."
While specifics remain vague, the framework hints at a meaningful de-escalation. The most compelling driver behind this shift? Not a change of heart, just China's dominance in rare earth elements - critical for semiconductors, robotics and aerospace applications.
This accord between the U.S. and China includes the latter's commitment to deliver rare earth in exchange for the U.S. lifting its export curbs on ethane, chip software and jet engines. As trade talks evolve, Beijing is not above deploying its rare earth "trump card" to reopen access to restricted U.S. AI chip technologies.
If the U.S. should revise or relax chip export policies or greenlight a new line of compliant processors, Nvidia could regain access to the highly lucrative market. Such a development would materially bolster the case for Nvidia hitting $200 by year's end.
However, even without China, Nvidia remains on solid footing thanks to its ability to innovate relentlessly.
Nvidia's growth story is deeply structural, spanning beyond GPUs to hyperscaler ramp-ups, AI factories, sovereign AI, Networking, gaming, cybersecurity and self-driving cars. Nvidia isn't just firing on all cylinders - it is building entirely new growth engines.
Blackwell's Blockbuster Ramp:
In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, Nvidia's data center revenue surged 73% year-over-year (y-o-y) to $39 billion, with compute revenue accounting for $34.2 billion, up 76% y-o-y. At the heart of this explosive growth lies Blackwell, the fastest-ramping architecture in Nvidia's history.
AI Factories and Sovereign AI:
As nations seek to build in-country AI infrastructure using Nvidia's full-stack, Sovereign AI is a solid growth engine for the AI bellwether. Nvidia has sovereign AI deals in place with Saudi Arabia, Taiwan and the UAE.
AI factory build-outs are driving significant revenue for Nvidia with deployments at AT&T, BYD, Capital One, Foxconn, MediaTek and Telenor. The count of Nvidia-powered AI factories doubled y-o-y to roughly 100 in the first quarter, with the average number of GPUs powering each factory also doubling in the same period.
Nvidia's new Spectrum-X and Quantum-X silicon photonics switches will enable next-level AI factory scaling to millions of GPUs. These switches offer 3.5x greater power efficiency, 10x higher network resiliency and accelerate customer time-to-market by 1.3x.
Other revenue drivers:
This brings us to networking—which is shaping up as a critical contributor for Nvidia with first-quarter networking revenue reaching nearly $5 billion—up 56% y-o-y and 64% sequentially.
Networking growth was driven by NVLink—with Q1 shipments exceeding $1 billion.
Hyperscale customers can now build semi-custom CCUs and accelerators that connect directly to the Nvidia platform with NVLink.
Also helping networking growth is the continued adoption of Ethernet for AI solutions.
Spectrum X—which is the world's first Ethernet networking platform for AI—is now annualizing over $8 billion in revenue with deployments across Microsoft Azure,
Oracle Cloud,
CoreWeave,
Meta,
Google Cloud
and xAI.
For AI-powered cybersecurity—Checkpoint,
CrowdStrike
and Palo Alto Networks are using NVIDIA's AI security and software stack to build,
optimize
and secure agentic workflows.
CrowdStrike,
for instance,
has achieved 2x faster detection triage with 50% fewer compute resources.
Gaming revenue for the first quarter was a record $3.8 billion,
up 42% from a year ago
and up 48% sequentially,
driven by sales of the Blackwell architecture.
Professional Visualization revenue,
which includes Nvidia Omniverse,
rose 19% from a year ago to $509 million,
thanks to broader adoption of Ada RTX workstation GPUs,
addressing workflows in AI acceleration,
real-time graphics rendering and data simulation.
Automotive and Robotics revenue rose 72% to $567 million from a year ago,
driven by sales of Nvidia's self-driving platforms.
Most recently,
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang identified robotics as the company's next biggest growth opportunity after AI,
noting that self-driving cars are likely to be the first major commercial application of this technology.
Even at record highs,
Nvidia's stock may not be as expensive as it is touted to be.
Some valuation metrics suggest room for upside:
Interestingly,
those discount levels align closely with the roughly 25-30% upside Nvidia would need to reach $200.
That leaves the question less about if Nvidia can reach $200 and more about when investors will be ready to price that in.
So,
what are analysts saying about the Nvidia stock?
- Nvidia currently has a "Strong Buy" rating with a 12-month price target of $174 per share.
- Loop Capital lifted its price target for Nvidia to $250 from $175 while maintaining its "buy" rating.
The rating firm's client note said,"Our work suggests we are entering the next 'Golden Wave' of Gen AI adoption and NVDA is at the front-end of another material leg of stronger-than-anticipated demand." - Cantor Fitzgerald maintained a Buy rating with a $200 target,citing robust fundamentals and strong growth expectations through 2025 especially in 2026.
In my opinion,Nvidia stock is likely to reach at least $180 by year-end,supported by a re-rating in its forward PEG to around 1.47;if market sentiment continues to remain constructive.Key catalysts will be earnings announcements for the rest of the year,but it all boils down to market perception.Nvidia can continue to generate stellar results,and if that fails to align with already-high investor expectations,Nvidia stock could pause or pull back.That said,for the long-term,Nvidia is a structural compounder with deeply embedded growth levers and robust AI tailwinds.Any dip in the stock is most likely a buying opportunity.If there is any change in China export policy,the Nvidia stock could achieve its $180 target even sooner and be well on its way to $200 by year-end.