Nvidia’s Latest Surge Is About More Than a Single Order

Nvidia’s latest rally was not built on a routine earnings beat or a product launch alone. The driver was a strategic vote of confidence from SpaceX, which has put the chipmaker at the center of its plans for orbital data centers and, in the process, sharpened the market’s focus on both demand and supply.

On Friday, Nvidia shares closed at 193,68 Euro, up 2,03 Prozent from the previous day. For the week, the stock advanced 11,23 Prozent. That leaves it just 4,36 Prozent below the 52-week high of 202,50 Euro reached in mid-May. The company’s market value was put at 4.588,78 Milliarden Euro, and the week’s rise was described in one report as the largest weekly gain in the company’s history, equivalent to roughly 562 billion dollars in market capitalization.

SpaceX is the catalyst. Elon Musk’s aerospace company has agreed to an exclusive partnership with Nvidia for the planned orbital data centers under the Starmind project, also referred to as “Starmind AI1.” Those systems are set to run on Nvidia’s Vera Rubin architecture, using Vera CPUs and Rubin GPUs in NVL72 rack format. The arrangement extends beyond the space segment: SpaceX said it will rely exclusively on the same architecture for data centers on Earth and in orbit.

That exclusivity matters because it reinforces Nvidia’s role at the top end of the AI infrastructure stack. Bernstein analysts said the deal could put so-called neoclouds such as CoreWeave and Nebius at a disadvantage, since SpaceX may now move ahead in the allocation queue for chips. Both companies had previously received capital injections of 2 billion dollars from Nvidia and are each pursuing expansion plans of more than 5 gigawatts of AI computing power by 2030. Bernstein raised its price target for SpaceX from 239 to 248 dollar.

The SpaceX agreement sits alongside a series of large commitments Nvidia has made elsewhere in the ecosystem. The company plans to invest up to 3 billion dollars in Lancium, the Blackstone-linked power developer that supplies energy to OpenAI’s Stargate data center in Texas. It is also putting 5 billion dollars into Safe Superintelligence, the AI company founded by former OpenAI researcher Ilya Sutskever. In return, the startup gets access to Vera Rubin systems with ten times the computing capacity, despite not yet having a product or revenue.

Investor enthusiasm has also been supported by broader spending plans among the biggest cloud players. Alphabet is planning capital expenditure of between 195 and 205 billion dollars in 2026, while Amazon is targeting 220 billion dollars. Much of that spending is tied to the kind of infrastructure Nvidia sells.

Should investors sell immediately? Or is it worth buying Nvidia?

There is, however, a technical constraint beneath the bullish narrative. Nvidia is adapting the design of its next Rubin Ultra GPU because of an expected DRAM shortage through 2027. Instead of the originally planned 12-layer HBM4e memory setup with 384 gigabytes, the company is now testing a reduced 8-layer HBM4 version with 192 gigabytes, combined with two instead of four GPU dies and a lower power draw of 1.800 watt rather than 2.300 watt. The news hit memory makers in Asia harder than Nvidia itself: SK Hynix shares in Seoul fell by around 10 percent, while the US ADR dropped by almost 5 percent.

Analysts remain split on what comes next. Dan Ives of Yorkville Ives said the AI buildout is only in the “third inning” and estimated that just 15 percent of the expected total spending has been committed so far. He also said demand for Nvidia’s graphics chips exceeds supply by a factor of twelve, arguing that the company remains the main beneficiary of the industry shift. By contrast, New Street Research cut its price target from 343 to 340 dollar, a move that briefly pushed the stock down 1,9 percent in US trading. The broader analyst consensus still points to a buy recommendation and an average price target of around 303 dollar, comfortably above the share price at the time.

Insider sales have added a more cautious note. Chief financial officer Colette Kress sold stock worth about 11,0 million dollar over the past three months, while sales chief Ajay K. Puri disposed of holdings worth around 109,4 million dollar. Together, the two transactions total more than 120 million dollar. Critics see that as a warning sign; supporters argue it is negligible given Nvidia’s market capitalization of more than 4,5 trillion euro.

A further sign of the company’s expanding ambitions came on 4 August, when Nvidia launched Alpamayo 2 Super. The model, developed for robotaxis, is said to have outperformed Google’s Gemini 2.5 Pro and GPT-4o on key benchmarks. That software layer, paired with Nvidia’s hardware, helps explain why some investors are willing to pay up for the stock despite the memory shortage and the heavy expectations already embedded in the valuation.

The next major checkpoint arrives on 26 August, when Nvidia reports second-quarter numbers. Analysts are looking for revenue of around 90 billion dollar, up from 81,6 billion dollar in the prior quarter. A result at or above that level would likely reinforce the recent rerating. A miss, by contrast, could feed the volatility that has already begun to return.