Nvidia Would Have to Add Almost a Whole Broadcom to Reach $7 Trillion

Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA), the world's most valuable company, is worth around $5.45 trillion as of this writing. The next big round number is $7 trillion. And the gap between them is larger than it sounds: roughly $1.55 trillion, or nearly the full market value of Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO), the $1.69 trillion chip and infrastructure software business.

What would have to be true of Nvidia's revenue, its margins, and its price-to-earnings multiple for the company to add almost a whole Broadcom to its value? And how long could it take?

Image source: Getty Images.

The climb itself looks normal

After all, fewer than 10 other companies in the world are worth more than the gap itself. At Nvidia's size, even a modest-sounding percentage gain today matches an entire giant company.

Step back, though, and the climb looks smaller than the dollars suggest. From around $225 as I write this, a $7 trillion market cap comes out to around $290 a share -- a rise of around 28%.

For context, shares have climbed 37% from their 52-week low, and they now trade within around 5% of their 52-week high. I'd say nothing about a 28% move is unusual for this stock.

Growth already on paper

Nvidia's latest results make the growth requirement seem nearly routine. Revenue in the fiscal 2027 second quarter (the period ended July 26, 2026) came to $96.2 billion, up 106% over a year earlier. This pace was even faster than the fiscal first quarter's 85% year-over-year growth. The data center business made up $89 billion of the total. And net income, at $59.7 billion, rose 126% year over year.

"Now, compute is revenue," said CEO Jensen Huang in the company's second-quarter earnings release.

The forecasts go far past the quarter. Guidance for the fiscal third quarter is $108 billion in revenue, around 12% above fiscal Q2. And on the company's late-August earnings call, CFO Colette Kress said Nvidia expects revenue to rise roughly 70% in fiscal 2028, the year ending in January 2028. She called it "a supply-constrained outlook." Put another way, the limit is manufacturing capacity, not customer demand.

Analysts' consensus already has fiscal 2027 revenue coming in around $412 billion. Grow that by roughly 70%, and fiscal 2028 lands somewhere around $700 billion.

Margins might not change the picture much, either. On the call, Kress said gross margins should bottom between 71% and 72% in the fiscal fourth quarter and then settle at 72% to 73% in fiscal 2028 as price hikes kick in. That'd be a drop from the fiscal second quarter's 75%, though a small one.

When might it happen?

Nvidia's stock costs around 14 times forward earnings today, using analysts' fiscal 2028 estimates. At $290 per share, that forward price-to-earnings multiple would sit closer to 18 -- around what Broadcom gets today on the same basis.

Fiscal 2028 ends in January 2028, roughly 16 months from now. If Nvidia delivers the year it has forecast, and the market prices those earnings the way it prices Broadcom's today, $7 trillion arrives somewhere on that timeline.

The stock could also get there without any increase in its price-to-earnings multiple. Hold that multiple of expected earnings flat, and shares hit $290 when expectations for fiscal 2029 are around 28% over fiscal 2028's. Next to this fiscal year's expected 90% revenue growth and next year's forecast 70%, that would arguably be a low bar. But nothing about fiscal 2029 is guided yet. And estimates that far out can change a lot.

Of course, the valuation multiple is also the half Nvidia doesn't control. Shares have risen roughly 21% in 2026 as of this writing, a year when quarterly profit more than doubled. That mismatch is the price-to-earnings multiple shrinking, quarter by quarter.

If the shrinking continues at anything like this year's pace, no forecast growth rate could take the stock to $7 trillion on this timeline.

In the end, what separates this milestone from past ones is that the growth to support it is already forecast. Reaching $7 trillion doesn't need a reacceleration or a richer valuation than Broadcom gets today.

I think the earnings will show up more or less as forecast. What the market chooses to pay for them is another question.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Broadcom and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.