Nvidia stock rose nearly 3% Tuesday, pushing its market cap above $4.5 trillion

Nvidia stock hit a new record on Tuesday, rising almost 3% and lifting the company’s market value above $4.5 trillion. The shares have now climbed 39% since the start of the year.

This gain comes as the company accelerates its deal-making, placing itself firmly in the middle of the global artificial intelligence race. Investors continue to move money into Nvidia, keeping it the most traded name in the market this year.

The AI buildout driving Nvidia’s surge gained more weight last week. OpenAI confirmed that Nvidia would take an equity stake worth up to $100 billion in the AI firm. It also said it would spend hundreds of billions of dollars on new data centers stacked with Nvidia GPUs.

OpenAI and Oracle then announced plans for five new mega data centers. They said these facilities would hold hundreds of thousands of GPUs and cost $500 billion under what they call the “Stargate” project. 

According to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the company’s chips now make up about 70% of spending on new AI data centers.

Citi lifts Nvidia target as AI deals expand

Analysts reacted quickly to the news. Citi raised its price target on Nvidia from $200 to $210 on Tuesday. The bank cited a bigger forecast for AI infrastructure spending after the OpenAI announcements.

“We believe OpenAI came to Nvidia asking for help as Nvidia has a very compelling product, and as the number of users and compute being consumed per user basis is growing,” wrote Citi analyst Atif Malik in a note reported by Cryptopolitan.

Beyond Nvidia, Wall Street itself showed unexpected strength for September. Stocks closed higher Tuesday as investors brushed aside fears of a U.S. government shutdown. The S&P 500 closed up 0.41% at 6,688.46, while the Nasdaq Composite gained 0.30% to finish at 22,660.01.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 81.82 points, or 0.18%, to close at 46,397.89, a fresh closing high. The federal government is due to run out of funding at midnight. President Donald Trump said Tuesday about a possible shutdown that “nothing is inevitable, but I would say it’s probably likely.”

Nvidia leads as indexes post strong September gains

Software stocks struggled during the day. Paychex slipped 1% after its quarterly results and Salesforce fell 3%. Nvidia was a bright spot, climbing in sympathy with CoreWeave, which is backed by Nvidia.

Cryptopolitan reported that CoreWeave announced a $14.2 billion artificial intelligence cloud infrastructure deal with Meta Platforms, adding another reason for traders to pile into Nvidia stock.

Despite these mixed moves, all three major U.S. indexes are on track for strong monthly gains as September ends. The S&P 500, which has averaged a 4.2% drop in September over the last five years, has risen 3% this month.

The Dow is up 1%. The Nasdaq outperformed with a 5% gain in September. Tuesday also marks the end of the third quarter. Quarter to date, the S&P 500 is up 7%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq is set to notch an 11% quarterly gain. The blue-chip Dow has climbed 5% since June, making it five straight quarterly advances.

Some analysts also pointed to other AI-related moves. BTIG analyst Marvin Fong wrote in a note that Etsy’s partnership with OpenAI’s ChatGPT puts the e-commerce platform “at the leading edge of agentic commerce.”

He raised his price target on Etsy by $9 to $81, suggesting about 9% upside from the most recent close of $74.34.

“Investors are clearly paying for more than just the immediate impact of this transaction,” Fong wrote. “Furthermore, we see ChatGPT’s scale, the [total addressable market] unlock, future agentic innovation and the fact we viewed ETSY as undervalued to begin with as justifying today’s price action.”

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