Wall Street sees only modest upside in Nvidia, but analysts are projecting significant gains for Snowflake shareholders.
The S&P 500 (^GSPC -0.04%) has advanced 11% year to date, and Nvidia (NVDA 1.75%) alone is responsible for one-third of those gains. The chipmaker has seen its share price surge 121% since January due to strong demand for data-center compute and networking products, especially those related to artificial intelligence.
However, Wall Street expects Nvidia to lose momentum over the next year. The median 12-month price target of $1,200 per share implies just 6% upside from its current price of $1,137 per share. By comparison, Snowflake (SNOW 1.01%) carries a median 12-month price target of $205 per share, implying 51% upside from its current price of $136 per share.
Is it time to sell Nvidia and buy Snowflake? Here’s what investors should know.
1. Nvidia
Nvidia reported blockbuster financial results in the first quarter of fiscal 2025 (ended April 28). Revenue increased 262% to $26 billion, and non-GAAP net income surged 461% to $6.12 per diluted share. Demand for artificial intelligence (AI) compute and networking products was the driving force behind those stellar numbers, reflected by 427% sales growth in the data-center product category.
Growth will inevitably slow at some point, but Grand View Research estimates that sales across AI hardware, software, and services will compound at 37% annually through 2030. Nvidia is well positioned to benefit due to its technological prowess and broad product portfolio. The company is best known for its graphics processing units (GPUs), but Nvidia actually builds entire AI data centers, and it has recently branched into subscription software and cloud services.
CEO Jensen Huang explained that advantage on the most recent earnings call. “We literally build the entire data center, and we can monitor everything,