Semiconductor giant Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has grabbed orders worth $5 billion from Chinese internet giants Alibaba (NYSE:BABA), Baidu (NASDAQ:BIDU), ByteDance, and Tencent (TCEHY), the Financial Times reported. The move comes as these companies are in a rush to buy Nvidia’s high-performance chips needed for generative artificial intelligence (AI) applications amid fears of potential new export controls by the Biden administration.
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden signed an executive order restricting certain U.S. investments in sensitive technology in China, including in semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum computing, and certain AI capabilities.
Nvidia Wins Big Orders for AI Chips
Alibaba, Baidu, ByteDance, and Tencent have placed orders worth $1 billion to buy about 100,000 of Nvidia’s A800 processors, which will be delivered this year. The four Chinese tech giants also bought $4 billion worth of NVDA’s graphics processing units (GPUs) to be delivered in 2024.
Nvidia offers its A800 processor in China to abide by the U.S. export control rules, which banned the sale of two advanced chips – the A100 and H100. These two advanced chips are used for high-performance computing and for training AI models. The A800 GPUs have slower data transfer rates than the A100s.
Alibaba, Baidu, and several other tech giants are working on generative AI projects following the success of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT)-backed start-up OpenAI’s ChatGPT. A Baidu employee told Financial Times, “Without these Nvidia chips, we can’t pursue the training for any large language model.”
ByteDance, which owns the video-sharing social media app TikTok, has reportedly stockpiled at least 10,000 Nvidia chips to support its AI projects. Additionally, it has placed orders for about 70,000 A800 chips for nearly $700 million, to be delivered in 2024.
Likewise, Alibaba has also received thousands of Nvidia’s H800 GPUs. BABA is being approached by several Chinese companies that intend to use its cloud services, powered by NVDA chips, to develop ChatGPT-like technology.
Meanwhile, reacting to the news of the $5 billion orders, Nvidia stated, “Consumer internet companies and cloud providers invest billions of dollars on data center components every year, often placing orders many months in advance.”
What is the Target Price for NVDA?
Nvidia scores Wall Street’s Strong Buy consensus rating based on 30 Buys and two Holds. The average price target of $506.72 implies 19% upside. Even after the significant year-to-date rally of 191%, most analysts remain upbeat about the stock due to the massive demand for the company’s AI chips.
Investors should note that JPMorgan analyst Harlan Sur is the most accurate analyst for NVDA stock, according to TipRanks. Copying his trades on NVDA and holding each position for one year could result in 96% of your transactions generating a profit, with an average return of about 80.6% per trade.
