Nvidia (NVDA) stock touched a new intraday all-time high above $195 on Thursday after Bloomberg reported that the US government has approved for export several billion dollars’ worth of the tech giant’s chips to the United Arab Emirates.
The Commerce Department issued Nvidia its export license to the UAE after the federation solidified earlier commitments to making reciprocal investments in the US, Bloomberg reported, citing an unnamed US official. This marks the first time Nvidia has been allowed to ship its AI chips to the country since Trump became president.
The move follows the announcement of a massive AI infrastructure project called Stargate UAE during President Trump’s visit to the country earlier this year. The project, unveiled in May, included a proposed 5 gigawatt data center hub in Abu Dhabi managed in part by OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and Oracle (ORCL), with infrastructure supplied by Cisco (CSCO) and Nvidia.
Trump’s AI deals with the UAE and Saudi Arabia have opened up new potential international markets for Nvidia as geopolitical tensions cloud its prospects in the Chinese AI market. Although the US government lifted a short-lived surprise export ban on sales of Nvidia’s chips to China in exchange for a cut of its revenue from the region — a highly unusual arrangement that has yet to be finalized — China has now reportedly banned tech companies from buying Nvidia’s chips.
Read more about Nvidia’s stock moves and today’s market action
In another boost to Nvidia stock on Thursday, Cantor Fitzgerald analyst C.J. Muse published a note raising his price target on the company to a Wall Street high of $300 from $240, dismissing the recent growing fears of an AI bubble.
“We are still in the early innings of a multi-trillion AI Infrastructure build-out with just the Hyperscalers providing significant line-of-sight into hundreds of billions of dollars worth of demand for the next handful of years,” Muse wrote. Hyperscalers are Big Tech cloud providers, such as Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet-owned Google (GOOGL, GOOG).
Muse’s view highlights the bull side of the AI bubble debate, which sees Big Tech as justifiably rushing to build data centers to meet unprecedented AI demand.
“Thus, this is not a bubble, and we are still in the early innings of this investment cycle,” Muse wrote.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang also added to optimism over the company in comments to CNBC on Wednesday, saying that demand for the company’s technology is showing no signs of slowing down.
