RBC Initiates Nvidia Stock with Outperform Rating, Citing 31% Potential Upside

Aditya Raghunath6 minute read
Reviewed by: Thomas Richmond
Last updated Jan 16, 2026

Key Stats for Nvidia Stock

  • 1- Year Price Change for Nvidia stock: 37%
  • $NVDA Share Price as of Jan. 15: $187
  • 52-Week High: $212
  • $NVDA Share Price Target: $253

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What Happened?

RBC Capital Markets just launched coverage of Nvidia (NVDA) stock with an “outperform” rating and a $240 price target, implying 31% upside from current levels.

Analyst Srini Pajjuri sees the chipmaker as one of the clear winners in semiconductors despite growing competition from ASICs and AMD.

Pajjuri’s bullish stance comes as Nvidia stock has traded sideways in recent weeks, even after unveiling a wave of new products and partnerships.

  • Nvidia recently announced its Vera Rubin GPU platform, which is already in production and set to ship in the second half of 2026.
  • Management also detailed its massive partnership with Eli Lilly, a $1 billion investment over five years to build an AI lab focused on drug discovery.
  • On top of that, Nvidia revealed deals with Thermo Fisher Scientific to bring AI agents directly into lab instruments and confirmed ongoing collaboration with major automakers like Mercedes-Benz to deploy its Alpamayo autonomous vehicle platform.

The company’s financial momentum remains strong.

CFO Colette Kress disclosed at the UBS Global Technology Conference that Nvidia’s projected $500 billion in combined revenue for the Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems through calendar 2026 doesn’t even include potential new deals, such as the framework agreement with OpenAI or the Anthropic partnership.

That suggests significant upside to consensus estimates.

NVIDIA Stock Valuation Model (TIKR)

CEO Jensen Huang emphasized at CES that open-source AI models have reached the frontier, with Nvidia becoming the world’s largest contributor to Hugging Face.

The company has released over 650 language models and 250 datasets spanning biology, chemistry, robotics, and vision.

This open-ecosystem strategy is driving adoption among startups and enterprises, with 80% of AI startups building on open models.

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What the Market Is Telling Us About Nvidia Stock

RBC’s initiation reflects growing confidence that Nvidia stock is undervalued despite its dominance in AI infrastructure.

Pajjuri highlighted that the stock trades at 24x forward earnings compared to a 5-year average of 50x before the AI boom. That discount reflects a potential slowdown in hyperscaler capital expenditures, but RBC believes any pullback will be gradual and manageable.

The analyst pointed to Nvidia’s full-stack approach as a key differentiator. Unlike competitors offering single-purpose ASICs, Nvidia provides a complete platform spanning chips, networking, software, and systems.

The recently announced Vera Rubin rack, for example, includes seven redesigned chips working together to deliver 5x higher inference performance and 3.5x higher training performance than Blackwell. This level of co-design is nearly impossible for competitors to replicate quickly.

Kress emphasized this advantage at the UBS conference, noting that Nvidia’s CUDA software platform gets better over time and provides backward compatibility across GPU generations.

She cited examples where software updates alone delivered 2x performance improvements on Blackwell chips after launch. That ongoing optimization keeps customers locked into the platform, and drives continued demand even for older architectures like Ampere and Hopper.

On the competition front, Pajjuri sees limited threat from ASICs and AMD despite recent progress. NVIDIA’s roadmap includes not just incremental GPU improvements but also entirely new categories, such as CPX for workload optimization and BlueField-4 for managing AI memory caches.

The company is also expanding into physical AI with its Cosmos world foundation model and robotics platforms like GR00T and Alpamayo, opening up massive new markets beyond data center infrastructure.

Nvidia stock has also benefited from its strategic positioning in healthcare and life sciences. Kimberly Powell, VP of Healthcare at Nvidia, detailed at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference how AI agents are being deployed at 3x the pace of the broader U.S. economy in healthcare settings.

Companies like Abridge and Corti are using Nvidia’s platform to give doctors 30% more time by automating administrative tasks.

The partnership with Lilly marks a major push into drug discovery, where Nvidia’s BioNeMo platform and biology foundation models are accelerating R&D timelines.

RBC’s bullish call also hinges on Nvidia’s balance sheet strength and visibility into its order book. The company’s inventory and purchase commitments jumped $25 billion last quarter, signaling massive revenue growth over the next several quarters.

Kress confirmed that all inventory at the start of December has already shipped to customers, underscoring strong demand.

For investors, the takeaway is clear: Nvidia stock may look expensive on the surface, but the company’s competitive moat, product roadmap, and market positioning justify a premium valuation.

RBC’s $240 price target suggests the market is underestimating Nvidia’s ability to sustain its AI dominance through 2026 and beyond.

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Disclaimer:

Please note that the articles on TIKR are not intended to serve as investment or financial advice from TIKR or our content team, nor are they recommendations to buy or sell any stocks. We create our content based on TIKR Terminal’s investment data and analysts’ estimates. Our analysis might not include recent company news or important updates. TIKR has no position in any stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading, and happy investing!

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