Can Nvidia Stock Reach $743 in the Next 12 Months?

The artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has made Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA) the world's largest public company at a market cap of approximately $5 trillion today. That's a share price of $205, thanks to stock splits. But despite Nvidia's historic run these past several years, there could be more upside ahead.

How much? Wall Street analysts have 12-month price targets as high as $743 per share. It's a lofty number to say the least. That's more than triple today's stock price, and would value Nvidia at over $15 trillion, an unprecedented valuation.

Here's a look at what's likely driving these ambitious price targets, and how likely Nvidia stock is to actually reach $700 per share over the coming year.

Image source: The Motley Fool.

The Vera Rubin boom is coming

Nvidia's business is at an exciting threshold right now. The company's next-generation AI chip platform, Vera Rubin, is in full production and poised to start shipping in the coming months. Vera Rubin consists of six total chips that combine to create an AI supercomputer designed for agentic AI and inference workloads. It also expands Nvidia's chip footprint across the server rack. It's a significant growth catalyst at a time when the AI industry is moving from training to inference.

NVDA Revenue (TTM) data by YCharts

CEO Jensen Huang has said that Nvidia expects $1 trillion in total orders between Vera Rubin and its current-generation flagship architecture, Grace Blackwell, by 2027. Such a large pipeline points to tremendous revenue growth ahead for Nvidia, which generated $253.5 billion in total sales over the past 12 months.

Why the price target isn't the point

Sure, Nvidia stock could reach $700 over the next year, but that depends a lot on its valuation.

Nvidia trades at 20 times its trailing 12-month sales, and that ratio would need to increase significantly to get shares to $700 over the next year, even with all that projected growth ahead. The stock has traded at higher multiples on its sales before, but that's harder for a stock to sustain as the numbers grow larger. It seems that $700 per share is definitely doable, but probably not in the next 12 months.

But that shouldn't be the primary focus. Price targets are eye-catching, but investors should instead concentrate on the company's broader direction. Nvidia is about to enter yet another growth phase as Vera Rubin begins impacting sales over the next several quarters. That's probably why 94% of the 69 Wall Street analysts surveyed by CNN Business rate the stock as a buy today. Wall Street isn't always right, but in Nvidia's case, the future still looks plenty bright enough to buy the stock.

Justin Pope has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.