<p>NVIDIA's latest quarterly results and future guidance have completely shattered Wall Street expectations. Goldman Sachs, in its latest research report, clearly pointed out that the path for this chip giant to outperform the market in the coming months has become exceptionally clear.</p>
<p>Driven by the continued strong capital expenditures of hyperscale cloud service providers, NVIDIA's revenue guidance for the first quarter significantly exceeded market consensus. According to reports from the trading desk, Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider and his team reiterated their &#34;Buy&#34; rating on the stock and maintained a target price of $250, which implies nearly a 28% upside from current levels. This move is expected to further boost market confidence in investments across the entire artificial intelligence infrastructure sector.</p>
<p>The optimism in the market is not solely based on historical performance. Goldman Sachs proactively identified three core catalysts driving NVIDIA's sustained strength in its report: <strong>upward revisions in capital expenditure expectations from hyperscale enterprises, increased visibility of spending following financing rounds for AI startups, and the release of AI models based on next-generation architectures that will reaffirm its technological moat.</strong></p>
<p>Additionally, NVIDIA's recent deep strategic partnerships and multi-billion dollar investments with top tech giants like Meta, OpenAI, and Anthropic not only fundamentally secure future order backlogs but also bring widespread positive spillover effects to the global tech supply chain, including storage and semiconductor equipment.</p>
<h2>Performance and Guidance Both Shatter Market Expectations</h2>
<p>NVIDIA achieved revenue of $68.1 billion in the fourth quarter, which not only exceeded Goldman Sachs' expectation of $67.3 billion but also significantly surpassed Wall Street consensus of $66.2 billion. The core data center business remains the absolute engine, with quarterly revenue reaching $62.3 billion. In terms of profitability quality, a gross margin of 75.2% and an operating margin of 67.7% both performed robustly, with adjusted earnings per share recorded at $1.76, far exceeding market expectations.</p>
<p>What draws more market attention is its extremely strong future guidance. NVIDIA expects the median revenue for the first quarter to reach $78 billion, far exceeding Wall Street's expectation of $72.1 billion. Although the company has begun to include approximately $1.9 billion in equity incentive expenses in its non-GAAP guidance due to changes in accounting standards, the adjusted earnings per share guidance, excluding this impact, is $1.79, still significantly surpassing the market expectation of $1.67.</p>
<h2>Three Core Catalysts Establish Outperformance Path</h2>
<p>Goldman Sachs clearly stated in its report that, unlike some previous quarters, there are currently three factors that make NVIDIA's path to outperforming the market in the coming months clearer.</p>
<p>First, the capital expenditure forecasts for hyperscale cloud vendors for 2026 still have room for upward adjustment, and early signs of capital expenditure growth for 2027 have begun to emerge, indicating that demand support from NVIDIA's core downstream customer base will continue to extend into the future.</p>
<p>Second, non-traditional customers represented by OpenAI and Anthropic will see significant improvements in the visibility of their procurement plans through 2027 as their respective financing rounds are completed. NVIDIA disclosed that it is still actively negotiating investment and cooperation matters with OpenAI, expecting to finalize contracts soon; at the same time, it has completed a $10 billion investment in Anthropic, with the agreement including that Anthropic will train its large language model based on the Blackwell and Rubin architectures
Thirdly, with the launch of a new generation of AI models trained on the Blackwell architecture, NVIDIA will reassert its technological leadership over AI chip competitors in the coming months, providing the market with more intuitive evidence of differentiated competition.</p>
<h2>Alliances with Tech Giants and Resilience of Gross Margins</h2>
<p><strong>In terms of business expansion, NVIDIA is solidifying its ecological barriers through intensive investments and collaborations.</strong> The report indicates that NVIDIA is still actively negotiating investments and collaborations with OpenAI and is expected to finalize an agreement soon. At the same time, the company has completed a significant investment of up to $10 billion in Anthropic, which has agreed to train its large language models on the Blackwell and Rubin architectures. Additionally, NVIDIA announced a broad collaboration with Meta, providing various data center products, and both parties will collaborate to deploy the Vera CPU in 2027, integrating Vera Rubin NVL72 into large-scale applications such as WhatsApp.</p>
<p>Regarding the market's heightened concern over the impact of rising high-bandwidth memory prices on margins, NVIDIA has provided reassurance. The company expects to maintain its gross margin at around 75% throughout the 2026 calendar year. Goldman Sachs analysts believe that this margin resilience is primarily due to the company's substantial advance procurement commitments related to memory made in 2025.</p>
<h2>Widespread Supply Chain Spillover Effects and Potential Risks</h2>
<p>NVIDIA's strong data center guidance not only benefits itself but also releases a clear bullish signal for the entire semiconductor sector. Goldman Sachs emphasizes that this reflects the currently extremely solid AI spending environment, most favorable to digital semiconductor targets such as Broadcom and AMD, and to some extent, beneficial for Marvell and ARM.</p>
<p>However, Goldman Sachs also highlighted four main downside risks to investing in this stock at the end of the report, including unexpected slowdowns in AI infrastructure spending, market share loss due to intensified competition, margin erosion caused by price wars, and ongoing supply chain shortages that have already manifested in the gaming business and will continue into the first quarter</p>

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<p>NVIDIA's latest financial report and guidance have significantly exceeded expectations, with Goldman Sachs reiterating a "Buy" rating and raising the target price to $250. Driven by increased capital expenditures from hyperscale cloud providers, successful financing for AI startups, and leading-edge new architecture technology, NVIDIA's path to outperforming the market is clear. With deep collaborations with Meta, OpenAI, and resilient gross margins, NVIDIA is driving strength across the entire industry chain</p>

- Nvidia's quarterly performance and future guidance exceeded Wall Street expectations, prompting Goldman Sachs to indicate a clear path for outperforming the market.  
- Driven by robust capital expenditures from large cloud service providers, Nvidia's revenue outlook for the first quarter significantly surpassed consensus, leading to a reiterated "buy" rating with a target price of $250.  
- Key growth catalysts identified include rising capital expenditure forecasts from cloud companies, increased visibility in spending from AI startups, and strengthening technology leadership in AI models based on new architectures.

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Not just outstanding performance! Goldman Sachs names three catalysts for NVIDIA, stating that "the path to outperformance in the coming months is clear."