Honestly, the "is it a bubble?" debate is starting to feel like a broken record. You’ve probably seen the headlines. One day Nvidia is the king of the world, and the next, some analyst is sweating over a 5% dip, shouting that the AI party is over. But if you’re asking will Nvidia stock go up in 2026, you have to look past the daily noise of the Nasdaq.
The reality on the ground is actually kind of wild.
We aren't just talking about a company that makes chips for video games anymore. Nvidia has basically become the central bank of computing power. In their Q3 fiscal 2026 report, they pulled in $57 billion in a single quarter. To put that in perspective: that’s a 62% jump from the previous year. Most of that—about $51.2 billion—came straight from data centers.
The Blackwell Factor and Why Demand is "Off the Charts"
Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s CEO, recently said that demand for the new Blackwell chips is "off the charts." It’s not just CEO talk.
Major players like Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are currently in an arms race. They aren't just buying a few chips; they are building "AI superfactories." Microsoft’s Fairwater project is a great example—it’s designed to scale to hundreds of thousands of the new Vera Rubin systems.
Why the supply chain is the real bottleneck
- CoWoS Capacity: TSMC is the only one who can package these high-end chips. They're at the limit.
- HBM3e Memory: Companies like Micron and SK Hynix are struggling to keep up with the demand for high-bandwidth memory.
- Power Grids: You can't just plug a supercomputer into a wall. Data centers are actually being delayed because cities can't provide enough electricity.
If you’re wondering about the stock price, this "shortage" is actually a weird kind of insurance. As long as the backlog is $500 billion deep (which it currently is for 2025 and 2026), the floor for the stock remains relatively high.
Will Nvidia stock go up despite the "AI Bubble" talk?
The bears love to point at the P/E ratio. They'll tell you it’s too expensive.
But is it?
Right now, Nvidia is trading at roughly 25 times its fiscal 2027 forward earnings. For a company growing revenue at 50% or 60% a year, that’s actually... kind of cheap? Usually, a "bubbly" stock trades at 100x earnings while barely growing. Nvidia is printing actual cash. They returned $37 billion to shareholders in the first nine months of the fiscal year through buybacks and dividends.
The China Wildcard
There's a massive shift happening with China. After the export bans, Nvidia's revenue from the region basically hit a wall. But now, with the H200 chips (a slightly older but still powerful model) getting the green light for some exports, things are changing.
Reuters reports that Chinese tech firms have already ordered over 2 million H200 GPUs for 2026. At roughly $27,000 a pop, that’s a potential $54 billion revenue stream that essentially didn't exist last year. That alone could be the "hidden" catalyst that pushes the stock higher than Wall Street expects.
What Could Go Wrong?
It’s not all sunshine and green candles.
The biggest risk isn't that Nvidia stops making great chips. It's that the "Hyperscalers" (Amazon, Google, Meta) might realize they aren't making enough money back from their AI investments. If Meta spends $40 billion on chips and doesn't see a spike in ad revenue or user engagement, they’ll eventually stop buying.
There's also the "In-House" threat.
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Google has its TPUs. Amazon has Trainium. If these companies decide they'd rather use their own silicon than pay the "Nvidia Tax," the growth story changes instantly. However, most experts, including those at Evercore ISI, think Nvidia’s software—the CUDA platform—is a "moat" that's too wide for competitors to cross anytime soon.
The 2026 Price Targets: What the Pros Think
Analysts are all over the map, but the "median" target is sitting around $250.
Some, like Mark Lipacis at Evercore, are much more aggressive, calling for $352 by the end of 2026. That would be an 80% move from where we've been sitting. On the flip side, some conservative models suggest the stock might just track the S&P 500 if the "AI hype" cools off into a "show-me" phase where companies have to prove the software works.
Actionable Steps for Investors
If you're looking at will Nvidia stock go up as a signal to buy, don't just FOMO in because of a green day.
- Watch the Capex: Keep a close eye on the earnings calls for Microsoft and Meta. If they announce they are cutting their AI spending, that's your cue to be careful with Nvidia.
- Check the Margins: Nvidia’s gross margins are currently around 73-75%. If that starts to dip toward 60%, it means competition (AMD or Intel) is forcing them to cut prices.
- The Rubin Launch: 2026 is the year of "Rubin." This is the next generation after Blackwell. If the benchmarks show another 10x leap in efficiency, the "cycle" starts all over again.
- Diversify your "picks and shovels": Sometimes the best way to play Nvidia's growth is to look at the companies they rely on, like Micron (MU) for memory or Vertiv (VRT) for data center cooling.
Nvidia isn't just a "chip company" anymore—it's the infrastructure for the next era of the internet. Whether the stock doubles again or takes a breather depends entirely on if the AI "agents" we're all being promised actually start doing our jobs for us. Until then, the order books are full, and the factories are running 24/7.