Citi raises price target on Nvidia, citing expanding AI opportunity

Citi analyst Atif Malik raised Nvidia's price target to $190, implying a 19.2% upside, driven by an expanding market fueled by significant sovereign AI demand and the successful scaling of its Blackwell architecture. Malik projects sovereign AI sales contributing billions from 2025, noting Nvidia's central role in global sovereign AI build-outs, which led him to increase Nvidia's 2028 total addressable market estimate to $563 billion and networking segment forecast to $119 billion. Concerns regarding Blackwell supply bottlenecks are dismissed as deployments, including CoreWeave's adoption of GB300 systems, are progressing rapidly.

Analysis

A recent Citi research note presents a strongly bullish case for Nvidia (NVDA), raising the price target to $190 and forecasting a 19.2% potential upside. The thesis is anchored on two primary growth vectors: the burgeoning sovereign AI market and the accelerated scaling of the Blackwell product architecture. The analyst, Atif Malik, quantifies the sovereign AI opportunity as contributing billions in revenue by 2025, noting Nvidia's integral participation in nearly every deal and providing a framework where 1 gigawatt of build-out equates to approximately $50 billion in sales. This demand driver led to a 13% upward revision of Nvidia's 2028 total addressable market to $563 billion. Concurrently, concerns regarding production bottlenecks for the new Blackwell chips are being dismissed, with the report citing rapid deployments of the GB200 and referencing CoreWeave's recent deployment of the GB300 NVL72 systems as evidence of a smooth and rapid transition. This optimism extends to Nvidia's networking segment, whose addressable market forecast was lifted from $90 billion to $119 billion, reflecting the needs of larger AI training clusters.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Given the analyst's raised price target and dismissal of production concerns, investors might consider the stock's outlook favorably and evaluate increasing exposure to NVDA.
• Monitor announcements related to sovereign AI contracts and the adoption rate of Blackwell systems by cloud service providers, as these are the primary catalysts underpinning the bullish thesis.
• Pay close attention to growth in Nvidia's networking segment, as the significant upward revision in its addressable market suggests it could be a key source of future revenue upside beyond the core GPU business.