Nvidia’s $5.5 Trillion Rally: The China Export Coup and the Texas Cloud Deal That Fueled a Record

Nvidia hits $5.5T market cap as US approves H200 AI chip exports to Chinese giants like Alibaba and Tencent, prompting analyst upgrades and a $3.4B cloud deal with IREN.

Nvidia has become the first company to breach a $5.5 trillion market capitalization, touching $5.52 trillion as investors shrugged off geopolitical friction and focused on a pair of potent catalysts. The stock surged to a fresh all-time high of 201.05 euros in European trading on Thursday, a 4.22 percent daily gain, and briefly ticked above 201.15 euros according to other data providers. The year-to-date advance now stands at roughly 25 percent.

The immediate spark came from Washington. The U.S. Commerce Department granted Nvidia permission to export its H200 artificial-intelligence chips to around ten Chinese technology conglomerates, including Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, JD.com, Lenovo and Foxconn. Each approved buyer is limited to 75,000 chips, and the U.S. government is demanding a 25 percent cut of all sales proceeds, along with transportation routed through American territory and additional security assurances.

Yet the practical effect remains unclear. No chips have been delivered so far. Chinese regulators are reportedly urging domestic firms to hold off on orders and instead turn to local alternatives, particularly from Huawei. Nvidia once commanded a 95 percent share of China’s AI-chip market, but after successive export restrictions that figure has effectively fallen to zero.

Investors chose to focus on the long-term narrative. Wall Street analysts swiftly raised their price targets. Cantor Fitzgerald took the most aggressive stance, lifting its target to $350 from $300 and maintaining an “Overweight” rating, implying roughly 55 percent upside from the previous U.S. closing price. The bank forecasts earnings per share in the mid-teens for 2027, applying a valuation multiple in the low twenties. UBS followed, boosting its target to $275 from $245, with analyst Timothy Arcuri predicting next-quarter revenue of $81 billion, about $3 billion above the midpoint of Nvidia’s own guidance. Arcuri warned, however, that cooling problems could delay mass production of new systems until September 2026. RBC Capital kept a buy rating and a $250 target, while Wells Fargo now calls for $315 and Susquehanna for $275.

Beyond the China chessboard, Nvidia is laying down physical infrastructure on home soil. The company signed a five-year cloud-service contract with IREN valued at $3.4 billion, based at a data center in Texas. Crucially, the deal includes an option for Nvidia to acquire an equity stake in IREN worth $2.1 billion. The move underscores the chipmaker’s strategy of securing capacity for its own operations while deepening ties with specialized cloud providers.

Parallel to the commercial expansion, Nvidia is cementing its presence in academic AI development. The Jensen Huang Foundation donated $108.3 million worth of computing power, channeled through partner CoreWeave to universities. The endowment will supply researchers with the kind of hardware that has made Nvidia the dominant force in AI training and inference.

The sheer scale of that dominance is reflected in the numbers. The company’s market share in AI accelerators hovers near 90 percent, and revenue in the fiscal fourth quarter topped $68 billion. Looking ahead, the market is bracing for the next earnings report on May 20, after the U.S. close. Consensus estimates call for $78.8 billion in revenue for the first fiscal quarter, a 77 percent jump from a year earlier. Goldman Sachs is even more bullish, penciling in roughly $80 billion. The profit-margin target stands around 75 percent, while the second-quarter guidance is likely to be measured against $86.6 billion.

The trajectory is underpinned by massive investment plans from the biggest cloud customers. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta are expected to plow a combined $710 billion into AI infrastructure in 2026 alone. Nvidia itself is aiming for more than $300 billion in annual calendar-year sales, banking on its near-monopoly in high-end chips.

Even after the record rally, the valuation is not entirely detached from earnings power. The stock trades at the mid-twenties multiple of expected profits, and institutional investors hold over 65 percent of the shares. For context, Nvidia’s market cap has now surpassed the entire value of silver as a commodity; only gold remains larger, at roughly $32.67 trillion.

The real test comes next month. The market will be looking not just for top-line growth but for evidence of tight capacity, stable pricing and insatiable demand from the hyperscale cloud operators. With the China export clearance secured, the Texas data-center deal signed and analyst targets climbing, the stage is set for an earnings moment that will measure just how much of the $5.5 trillion story is already priced in.