NVIDIA's Blackwell ramp seen modest currently, then 'big' in 2nd-half - analyst

As the fourth quarter earnings season is starting to wind down, there is still one company left to report—probably the most important stock in the world right now—NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA).

NVIDIA reports earnings on February 26, and with the DeepSeek hubbub, all eyes will be fixed on future AI buildout guidance and, of course, the Blackwell ramp.

Mizuho (NYSE:MFG) analyst Vijay Rakesh discussed his expectations for the Blackwell ramp in a new note to clients. According to the analyst, the NVIDIA Blackwell ramp will be modest in the current April quarter but “big” in the second half of the year.

“Not unexpectedly, NVDA GPU AI servers with GB200 drive a complex connectivity/power upgrade and, near-term, we estimate some growing pains,” the analyst commented. “Our checks indicate that while JanQ DC is expected in-line, AprQ could be more flattish as near-term ramps remain modest given GB200 (120KW per rack) power/ cooling requirements and more HGX/MGX mix.”

As such, the analyst is maintaining their January quarter NVIDIA estimates but modestly lowering their April quarter DC to a solid ~$36.7 billion.

That said, the firm anticipates a robust second half of 2025 for NVIDIA, driven by significant GPU investments from key customers: Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon’s AWS, and Google’s GCP. This growth is supported by increased capital expenditures in 2025, with potential additional tailwinds from Oracle’s OCI in 2025 and OpenAI/Apple in 2026.

While the analyst sees near-term concerns around increased US-China H20/B20 restrictions, they “continue to see NVDA driving strong industry leadership with its CUDA ecosystem, on top of its integrated HW platform where it has strong customer relationships.”

In addition, hyperscaler CAPEX is expected to be solidly up around 32% year-over-year in 2025.

The firm’s AI accelerator total addressable market (TAM) estimates are at ~$350B by 2027. They see, NVIDIA garnering 74% of his TAM, AMD (NASDAQ:AMD) getting 5%, and custom silicon accounting for 21%.

Elsewhere, the analyst said the massive Stargate project is another potential tailwind for NVIDIA.  The analyst assumes about 70% of the Capex will be for GPUs, which would imply about $75-$100 billion for NVIDIA GPUs, with the rest going for custom silicon from Broadcom (NASDAQ:AVGO).

Overall, the analysts maintained their January quarter estimates of $37.5 billion in revenue and EPS of $0.83, trimmed their April quarter estimates to $41.1 billion and $0.89, versus $41.8 billion and $0.91, raised FY 2026 from $189B/$4.23 to $196B/$4.39 and raised and F27E from $226B/$5.16 to $236B/$5.36.  The firm maintained an Outperform rating and price target of $175 on NVIDIA stock.