'AI-driven demand will remain robust': Wall Street is bullish on chip spending ahead of Nvidia earnings
Nvidia‘s big day is right around the corner.
The AI chipmaker is getting ready to report its second-quarter earnings results on Wednesday after the closing bell — a highly anticipated event expected to set the tone for markets and the AI trade going forward.
The company, which recently became the first ever to hit a $4 trillion valuation, is expected to pull in $46.2 billion in revenue for the quarter. Adjusted earnings per share are expected to come in at $1.01, according to Bloomberg consensus estimates.
Investors are gearing up for it to be a big day for the entire stock market, given Nvidia’s outsized share of the overall market and big swings that have historically followed its earnings results. In previous quarters, Nvidia stock dropped even as the firm beat earnings, largely due to investors’ lofty and impossible-to-please expectations for the firm.
Despite that lofty hurdle to be cleared, Wall Street is feeling bullish on the business ahead of the coming results. Analysts across the board said they’ll be watching for signs that AI capex spending from hyperscalers will keep up its momentum, and that demand for Nvidia’s chips will stay still strong globally.
Here’s what a handful of firms are saying:
Baird: Chip demand is accelerating
Demand for Nvidia’s GB200 chip is expected to see a “significant acceleration” in sell-through shipments through July, with that momentum carrying through the second half of the year, Baird analysts wrote in a note.
Nvidia is also readying to release its GB300 AI chip, which could launch as soon as late September.
Investment in the AI space, meanwhile, looks strong, thanks to the handsome return on artificial intelligence-related investments, Baird said.
“The AI GPU competitive landscape remains very favorable to Nvidia for the second half as well as next year,” the firm wrote in a note on Monday.
Baird reiterated its “Outperform” rating on the stock and lifted its price target to $225 from $195 a share, implying 25% upside. The increase reflects Nvidia’s competitiveness in the market for AI datacenters, strong ongoing stock momentum, and a “strong new product roadmap and software ecosystem,” analysts said.
Evercore ISI: Nvidia remains a ‘top pick’
Evercore analysts said they expected AI capex to soar 72% in 2025, adding that cloud demand at companies like Amazon and Azure suggested that AI “hit a tipping point at enterprises.”
Industry checks also suggest there’s strong demand for Nvidia’s Blackwell product line, and that the company’s software remains the “solution of choice” for training large language models.
“This year, it’s all Grace Blackwell 2000. We’re working day-in, day-out, deploying it, integrating it and then waiting for the next shipment to come,” one of the firm’s Tier 2 channel checks was quoted as saying in the note.
“NVDA remains our top pick, near-term due to improving visibility, longer-term, as we believe it could ultimately capture up to 16% weighting of the S&P 500 Index,” they added. At the time analysts wrote the note, Nvidia made up around 8% of the benchmark index.
Evercore reiterated its “Outperform” rating on the stock and lifted its price target to $214 a share from $190 a share, implying 19% upside from current levels.
Stifel: Robust GB300 cycle ahead
Analysts at Stifel said they expected Nvidia to beat earnings estimates for the quarter and post “healthy” guidance for the third quarter, thanks to strong demand for its chips.
H20 chip sales, which were temporarily banned in China, have resumed, and demand for Nvidia’s coming GB300 chip looks poised to accelerate, they wrote.
“The longer-term bull-case emphasizes that AI-driven demand will remain robust and NVDA should maintain their market leadership in AI-accelerators into circa-2030 at the very least,” they wrote. “As it stands today, we lean more toward the bull case, while underscoring that supply-side risk (including tariffs and trade regulations) is the key overhang to the name.”
Nvidia might post a smaller top-line earnings beat than investors have seen in the past. The margin of its quarterly earnings beats has narrowed since 2025, analysis said, citing their analysis of the company’s earnings reports.
FactSet/Company reports/Stifel Research
Analysts reiterated their “Buy” rating on the stock and raised their price target to $212 from the prior $202, implying 18% upside.
William Blair: AI demand is a core growth driver
William Blair said it expected Nvidia to benefit from growing AI spend.
The firm pointed to consensus estimates for capex spending in the space, suggest that hyperscalers like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are on track to spend around $503 billion on capex a year by 2028. That compares to the $398 billion those companies are expected to spend by the end of this year.
Company reports/FactSet/William Blair Equity Research
“We expect to see sustained strength in AI demand across upcoming semi earnings as hyperscalers, neoclouds, and increasingly sovereigns invest in data center capacity to build larger AI clusters,” Sebastien Naji, an analyst at William Blair, wrote in a note to clients on Monday.
The firm issued an “Outperform” rating on Nvidia.