I bear in mind protecting Nvidia (NVDA) in the course of the Covid pandemic years, when it was nonetheless a gaming graphics-card story.
For perspective, it closed out in November 2021, buying and selling round $32 split-adjusted, in accordance with StatMuse, which is about what you’d most likely pay for a couple of McDonald’s runs.
Certain, it was nonetheless a strong tech inventory, an $81 billion one at that, however removed from being the spine of AI.
Then OpenAI launched its now ubiquitous AI chatbot in ChatGPT in late 2022, CNBC reported, and all the pieces simply snapped into focus.
Nearly in a single day, Nvidia stopped being a distinct segment tech play and have become a mission-critical a part of a brand new period in computing.
From 2024 to 2025, Nvidia surged previous a $3 trillionmarket cap, in accordance with S&P International, and later over $4 trillion (price 50x extra than in late 2021).
A $10,000 wager on Nvidia about three years in the past might doubtlessly be price an eye-popping $123,000 right this moment (a staggering 1,132% achieve).
Over the previous 12 months, Nvidia has delivered roughly 40% good points to buyers.
Since then, the narrative continues to develop, with Nvidia being a crucial enabler of the AI arms race.
That backdrop helps clarify why veteran tech analyst Dan Ives remains to be pounding the desk. Ives is of the opinion that Mr. Market remains to be underestimating how lengthy and large this AI buildout might be.
He now units a head-spinning $250 base-case goal for Nvidia by the finish of 2026, which represents a 33% achieve from its present value at $187.67 (on the time of writing).
Ives is betting that the AI story some buyers assume they’ve missed is simply getting began.
Nvidia inventory drew consideration after an analyst issued a daring 2026 value goal.
Photograph by PATRICK T&interval; FALLON on Getty Photos
Wall Road listens when Dan Ives talks tech
Dan Ives is the managing director and world head of tech analysis at Wedbush Securities, and he is certainly one of Wall Road’s most-quoted analysts within the expertise area.
What units him aside is that he isn’t shy in shelling out large numbers on large themes after which explaining his rationale in plain English on TV.
Ives has constructed a rock-solid repute leaning into tech cycles early, together with areas like cloud computing, EVs, and right this moment’s AI-powered inventory market growth.
Extra Nvidia:
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His investing focus is on secular progress, catalyst-driven expertise, and a pointy concentrate on main platform shifts.
For perspective, on TipRanks, Ives is rated as a five-star analyst, boasting a 56% success fee throughout an eyebrow-raising 500 rankings, backed by an common return of about 16% per name.
That monitor file issues immensely, particularly when he takes daring positions.
Why Dan Ives sees Nvidia at $250 by the top of 2026
For Ives, his huge $250 name on Nvidia has all the pieces to do with earnings energy that Wall Road hasn’t totally modeled.
In an interview with Yahoo Finance, he argues that the market nonetheless underestimates how crucial Nvidia is to each a part of the AI stack, protecting all the pieces from coaching to inference to real-world deployment.
His unimaginable conviction within the inventory rests totally on Nvidia’s immense scale and positioning.
Nvidia’s 3-year timeline for rewriting its bottom-line positioning
- Jan. 2022:$9.8 billion baseline 12 months earlier than the AI earnings began to materialize
- Jan. 2023:$4.4 billion (-55% 12 months over 12 months), a down 12 months because the video gaming large noticed its game-related and data-center demand soften forward of the AI growth
- Jan. 2024:$29.8 billion (+581% 12 months over 12 months), the AI inflection level
- Jan. 2025:$72.9 billion (+145% 12 months over 12 months), when scale kicked in, and margins grew at a breakneck tempo, with Nvidia’s AI dominance displaying up in earnings
- Trailing 12 months:$99.2 billion, representing run-rate earnings that felt nearly unimaginable simply two years in the past
Supply: Looking for Alpha
Nvidia sits upstream of hyperscalers, enterprises, and governments which might be racing forward in creating AI infrastructure.
Ives additionally believes that geopolitical shifts and evolving commerce dynamics are at present being mispriced, as enterprise AI adoption stays removed from mature.
So if estimates transfer even modestly greater, the maths begins to work shortly.
The AI buildout remains to be in early innings
The most important mistake buyers proceed to make, in accordance with Ives, is that they really feel the AI commerce is already crowded.
In actual fact, he feels it is the exact opposite, with the market solely in 12 months three of an eight-to 10-year buildout, which is why the choppiness hasn’t damaged the underlying development.
As an example his level additional, he says solely about 3% of U.S. corporations are meaningfully utilizing AI right this moment, with most nonetheless within the analysis or pilot section.
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Therefore, Ives focuses lots much less on hype cycles and extra on enterprise-related spending. Companies are budgeting as an alternative of simply experimenting previously.
In actual fact, Goldman Sachs states that AI corporations might make investments north of $500 billion in 2026, saying that analyst capex estimates have constantly underestimated the buildout.
Capital expenditures linked to AI infrastructure have risen lots faster than forecasts, stunning buyers who have been splitting hairs about market pullbacks only a 12 months in the past.
On high of that, Ives factors to a serious geopolitical shift at work.
For the primary time in many years, he feels that the U.S. has regained a decisive lead over China in core expertise, which provides new layers to the AI story.
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