Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has established itself as the current bull market’s AI darling, a position grounded in real-world strength. While the AI-fueled rally has been accompanied by plenty of hype, Nvidia’s stock market success is hard to dispute, given that its best-in-class AI chips have been selling by the bucketload.
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With 2025 at the gate, Truist’s William Stein, an analyst ranked in 10th spot amongst the thousands of Wall Street experts, is waving a caution flag over the semiconductor space, believing investors have been “ascribing both a big cyclical recovery in fundamentals, and applying peak P/E to the stocks.”
However, the good news for NVDA investors, is that this caution does not extend to the chip giant. The analyst projects that 2025 will be “another constructive year” for Nvidia, underpinned by two key drivers: “(1) all relevant industry contacts support the dominance and superiority of NVDA’s full technology stack and (2) we believe NVDA will announce a client-side CPU during 2025, opening up an additional ~$35B TAM.”
Regarding the first factor, Stein emphasizes that Nvidia’s leadership in AI is not just down to its chips, servers, or racks but “most importantly,” through its software and pre-trained models. And despite ongoing concerns and speculation about the timing and scale of the GB200 NVL72 server rack rollout, the analyst’s sources “continue to be more supportive” of a ramp early next year, paving the way for solid growth ahead.
As for the second point, the idea of Nvidia launching a client-side CPU may sound like a curveball, but Stein’s been calling it for years. He’s long expected Nvidia to follow its Grace server CPU with a similar move for client devices. The logic is simple: Nvidia doesn’t just chase market share – it seeks to solve increasingly complex computing challenges. As Stein puts it, “We are the first to acknowledge that NVDA doesn’t enter markets just to ‘take share’ and generate revenue. Instead, the company is interested in addressing increasingly difficult and changing compute challenges.”
For years, client-side computing has relied mainly on X86 solutions from Intel and AMD. However, the growing adoption of AI in data centers has “sparked the imagination” of both technology makers and consumers, creating a new opportunity to bring greater AI computing power to client devices.
Given Nvidia’s expertise in the AI technology stack for servers and its leadership in client-side gaming, Stein thinks the company will launch a client-side CPU in 2025. This $35 billion TAM might not be as “meaningful to NVDA as it would have been a few years ago, it’s still a significant potential growth driver.”
To this end, Stein rates NVDA shares as a Buy, while raising his price target from $169 to $204. Should the figure be met, investors will be pocketing returns of 56% a year from now. (To watch Stein’s track record, click here)
Elsewhere on the Street, with an additional 36 Buys pitted against just 3 Holds, the analyst consensus rates NVDA stock a Strong Buy. The forecast calls for 12-month gains of ~36%, considering the average price target stands at $177.14. (See Nvidia stock forecast)
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Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the featured analyst. The content is intended to be used for informational purposes only. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment.
