Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) has faced challenges in 2025, dealing with unfavorable macro developments and company-specific issues such as the rise of DeepSeek and concerns about sustaining its rapid growth. This makes next week’s GTC conference a pivotal moment for Nvidia to regain momentum. However, Citi’s top analyst Atif Malik has reservations.
Malik noted, “The risk/reward for Nvidia’s stock looks attractive as it trades below its historical P/E trough of 19x. Investors are now fully accounting for approximately 28% sales exposure to China and Singapore due to AI diffusion rules.” Despite this, Malik believes investors are awaiting clarity on AI restrictions and tariff impacts on gross margins, which Nvidia may not yet be positioned to address.
At GTC, Nvidia is expected to unveil its Blackwell ‘Ultra’ (B300) chip along with the GB300. While the B300 will likely stick with a 4NP process, Malik anticipates a significant performance leap compared to the B200. Given the early arrival of GB200 in Q1, he sees the Ultra chip as more of a Q3 story rather than Q4.
Investors will also look forward to updates on the next-generation Rubin chip, set to debut in 2026 with 8 stacks of HBM4 memory. It will likely be introduced alongside the Vera CPU, NVLink 6 switches (3,600 GB/s), Connect-X 9 cards (1,600 Gb/s), and X1600 InfiniBand and Ethernet switches. Malik expects Nvidia to discuss its roadmap beyond Rubin, including the Rubin ‘Ultra’ chip, which could introduce a 12-stack HBM architecture.
Malik also anticipates Nvidia will continue its scaled-up approach, announcing the NVL288 (a single-rack system) alongside the Rubin chip. Regarding Co-Packaged Optics (CPO), while some deployments may happen with Blackwell Ultra, large-scale adoption is more likely with the Rubin chip in 2026.
Despite these uncertainties, Malik remains bullish on Nvidia, assigning the stock a Buy rating with a $163 price target, implying a 41% upside from current levels. The general Street view is even more optimistic; the average price target stands at $177.41, suggesting potential returns of 53% a year from now. — news from TipRanks