December 20, 2025 — NVIDIA Corporation stock (NASDAQ: NVDA) is back in the spotlight as a cluster of policy, regulatory, and analyst-driven headlines collide with the company’s already-heated AI narrative. Shares were last indicated around $180.99, up roughly 3.85% from the prior close, after trading between $175.57 and $181.37 on the latest session tracked.
That move isn’t happening in a vacuum. Over the past several days, Nvidia has been pulled by three big gravity wells:
- a U.S. government review that could reopen a major China revenue lane (but with geopolitical strings attached),
- a regulatory green light for Nvidia’s high-profile Intel investment, and
- a renewed Wall Street argument that NVDA looks “cheap” relative to its own history—even after an enormous multi-year run.
Below is what’s driving Nvidia stock today, what analysts are forecasting into 2026, and the specific catalysts investors are watching next.
The headline moving NVDA: U.S. review of Nvidia’s H200 AI chip sales to China
The most market-sensitive development is a U.S. interagency review that could determine whether Nvidia can ship its H200 AI processors to China under a licensing framework.
According to Reuters, the U.S. Commerce Department has sent license applications related to proposed H200 chip sales to the State, Energy, and Defense Departments for review. Under export regulations, those agencies have 30 days to weigh in, and if disagreements persist, the final decision rests with President Donald Trump. [1]
This review follows Trump’s earlier public stance that H200 sales could be allowed with the U.S. government collecting a 25% fee on such sales—an idea that has attracted both support (as a way to keep U.S. firms dominant) and sharp criticism (as a national security risk). [2]
Why this matters for Nvidia stock
China has historically been one of the world’s most important AI demand centers, but U.S. export restrictions have repeatedly narrowed what Nvidia can sell there. A path to ship H200—while still not Nvidia’s newest “Blackwell” line—would be meaningful because:
- H200 is described by Reuters as Nvidia’s second-most powerful AI chip, and it has “never been allowed for sale in China,” even though it is slower than Blackwell at many tasks. [3]
- Any reopening of shipments can change investor expectations for Nvidia’s near-term revenue mix, especially during a period when AI infrastructure spending remains massive.
The catch: geopolitics doesn’t do “clean stories”
Even if the U.S. approves exports, there are still practical constraints:
- The process may take time (the interagency review window is a built-in delay). [4]
- Beijing’s posture matters too; market coverage has highlighted uncertainty around whether Chinese regulators would allow purchases even if the U.S. approves them. [5]
- And the broader debate in Washington is intense, with concerns about advanced chips accelerating China’s military and AI capabilities. [6]
Bottom line: for NVDA, this is a potential upside catalyst—but not a guaranteed revenue switch.
Regulation check: Nvidia’s Intel investment cleared by U.S. antitrust agencies
In a separate but confidence-boosting regulatory development, Reuters reports that U.S. antitrust agencies cleared Nvidia’s investment in Intel, based on a notice posted by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. Reuters notes the FTC notice did not specify transaction details, but Nvidia previously said (in September) it would invest $5 billion in Intel. [7]
Why investors care
For Nvidia, this clearance reduces one near-term source of uncertainty around a deal that markets view as strategically significant—especially given Intel’s ambitions to stabilize and expand its role in U.S. semiconductor manufacturing and advanced packaging.
For NVDA stock watchers, it’s also a reminder that Nvidia’s strategy isn’t only “sell GPUs.” Nvidia is increasingly shaping the ecosystem—capital, partnerships, platforms, and supply chain leverage.
The “cheap NVDA” argument is back (yes, even after the AI boom)
A striking theme on December 20 coverage is that multiple analysts are revisiting the idea that Nvidia’s valuation looks unusually low relative to its own history—not necessarily “cheap” in an absolute sense, but cheap compared with the growth Nvidia is still posting.
MarketWatch summarized Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon’s view that Nvidia was trading at under ~25x forward earnings and in a historically low percentile versus the past decade, also citing relative valuation versus the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index. [8]
Meanwhile, StockAnalysis’ tracking of analyst notes shows Truist’s William Stein maintaining a bullish stance while raising a price target from $255 to $275 (dated Dec. 19, 2025 in its feed). [9]
This matters for SEO-land and real-world investing because “Is Nvidia stock still expensive?” is basically the modern version of “Is the sun still hot?”
Nvidia fundamentals: what the company itself just told investors
The strongest foundation under any Nvidia stock forecast is still the company’s own operating performance—because cash flow has a funny habit of overpowering vibes.
In its third quarter fiscal 2026 results (quarter ended October 26, 2025), Nvidia reported:
- Revenue of $57.0 billion (record),
- Data Center revenue of $51.2 billion (record),
- Earnings per diluted share of $1.30 (GAAP and non-GAAP), and
- GAAP gross margin of 73.4%. [10]
For forward-looking investors, the key line is Nvidia’s Q4 fiscal 2026 outlook:
- Revenue expected to be $65.0 billion, plus or minus 2%. [11]
Nvidia also disclosed substantial shareholder returns: during the first nine months of fiscal 2026 it returned $37.0 billion via repurchases and dividends, and it had $62.2 billion remaining under its repurchase authorization at the end of Q3. [12]
This is the “engine room” behind the stock narrative: massive revenue, very high margins, and continued buyback capacity.
New product and ecosystem moves that reinforce Nvidia’s moat
Nvidia’s story in late 2025 isn’t only hardware. The company is building what is effectively an AI industrial stack—chips, networking, software, models, and partnerships that make switching away painful.
1) Nvidia’s open-source model push: Nemotron 3
Reuters reported that Nvidia unveiled the Nemotron 3 family of open-source AI models, with the smallest (“Nemotron 3 Nano”) released immediately and larger versions expected in the first half of 2026. Nvidia positioned the models as faster, cheaper to run, and better at multi-step tasks—an explicit response to the surge of open-source models from Chinese AI labs. [13]
2) Nvidia buys SchedMD, the company behind Slurm scheduling tech
Also via Reuters, Nvidia announced an acquisition of SchedMD, described as an AI software provider tied to Slurm, an open-source workload manager widely used to schedule large-scale computing jobs. Nvidia said the software would remain open-source. [14]
Strategically, this is Nvidia tightening its grip on the plumbing of AI data centers—because whoever controls orchestration and scheduling often influences what gets bought next.
3) U.S. “Genesis Mission” partnerships and AI infrastructure politics
Reuters also reported the U.S. Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission signing new AI collaboration agreements with 24 organizations, including Nvidia, aimed at accelerating research while strengthening energy and security capabilities. [15]
Nvidia’s own blog framed its role as a private industry partner, including offering accelerated computing and AI models, and described an MOU with DOE outlining priority areas (manufacturing, open-source AI, robotics, digital twins, nuclear, quantum, and more). [16]
For NVDA stock, this is less about immediate revenue and more about political-industrial alignment: Nvidia is positioning itself as core infrastructure for national-level AI programs.
Insider activity: a long-time Nvidia director sold shares
Investors tend to overreact to insider sales, but they still get headlines—especially when the stock is a global obsession.
Reuters reported that Nvidia board member Harvey Jones sold 250,000 shares for more than $44 million, at an average price of $177.33 (sale date Dec. 15), and still retained more than 7 million shares indirectly through a trust. [17]
This doesn’t prove anything by itself (insiders sell for many reasons), but it adds to the “what do the people closest to the business think?” chatter.
NVDA stock forecasts for 2026: analyst targets and consensus ranges
Forecasting Nvidia is like forecasting a weather system that also builds weather computers. Still, the market runs on expectations, so here’s what the consensus numbers look like as of Dec. 20, 2025.
Consensus price targets (12-month)
- MarketBeat: average price target $262.14, with a reported range from $205 (low) to $352 (high), implying roughly 44.84% upside from about $180.99 (its “current price” reference). [18]
- StockAnalysis: average price target $252.49, median $250, high $352, low $100, with a “Strong Buy” consensus from the analysts it tracks. [19]
- TipRanks: average price target listed around $261.31, with its own methodology and a slightly different analyst sample window. [20]
Different platforms often show different “consensus” because they don’t all count the same analysts, the same dates, or the same weighting. The important takeaway is directionality: Wall Street remains broadly bullish, with upside targets clustering in the mid-$200s and a high-end near the mid-$300s. [21]
Near-term earnings and sales forecasts
TipRanks lists a next quarter sales forecast around $65.34B (with a range) and a next quarter EPS estimate around $1.51 (with a range), while also referencing the prior quarter’s results. [22]
That sales figure is notably close to Nvidia’s own $65.0B ±2% quarterly revenue outlook. [23]
The bull case vs. the bear case: what the debate is really about
Why the bulls think NVDA still has room to run
The optimistic case rests on a few pillars:
- Demand compounding: Nvidia’s Q3 results and Q4 outlook imply that AI infrastructure spending is still scaling rapidly. [24]
- Platform lock-in: Beyond GPUs, Nvidia is building an integrated stack (software tools, open models, orchestration, and partnerships) that makes customer switching harder. [25]
- Potential China upside: Even partial reopening of the China lane through H200 licensing could improve sentiment and expectations. [26]
What the bears (and cautious optimists) worry about
A prominent caution is that Nvidia’s customers—especially frontier AI labs and hyperscalers—are under pressure to control costs and improve ROI.
A Nasdaq.com analysis (via The Motley Fool) argued that Nvidia’s margins are extraordinarily high for a hardware business and that customers have incentives to develop custom chips (ASICs) or alternative approaches to reduce reliance on Nvidia’s general-purpose GPUs over time. The same piece also frames 2026 risk as more about demand durability and customer economics than about Nvidia’s technical quality. [27]
Add geopolitical uncertainty (China licensing) and you get the core tension: Nvidia is executing brilliantly, but its end market is politically and economically volatile. [28]
Another Nvidia headline investors are tracking: expansion plans in Israel
Outside the immediate stock catalysts, Nvidia also made news with a significant international expansion signal.
The Times of Israel reported Nvidia announced a planned “multibillion-shekel” R&D campus in Kiryat Tivon, described as a 160,000-square-meter hub intended to support an estimated 10,000 jobs, with construction expected to begin in 2027 and complete by 2031. [29]
This is long-dated in terms of revenue impact, but it reinforces the narrative that Nvidia is investing aggressively to sustain its leadership in AI computing.
What to watch next for Nvidia stock
Over the next several weeks, NVDA’s news cycle is likely to hinge on five concrete items:
- China export licensing timeline: whether the interagency review advances toward approvals, delays, or new constraints. [30]
- Any updates on China-side restrictions that could limit purchases even if the U.S. approves sales. [31]
- Follow-through on the Intel relationship after antitrust clearance—investors will want to see what “partnership” means operationally, beyond headlines. [32]
- Evidence that Blackwell-scale demand remains supply-constrained, not demand-constrained, heading into 2026. [33]
- Signals on customer economics—whether AI spending continues to expand, or shifts toward more custom silicon and cost-optimized deployments. [34]
Nvidia stock today is a mix of policy optionality, still-staggering fundamentals, and a valuation debate that has reopened at exactly the moment geopolitics is trying to rewrite the rules of the AI chip market.
References
1. www.reuters.com, 2. www.reuters.com, 3. www.reuters.com, 4. www.reuters.com, 5. www.barrons.com, 6. www.reuters.com, 7. www.reuters.com, 8. www.marketwatch.com, 9. stockanalysis.com, 10. investor.nvidia.com, 11. investor.nvidia.com, 12. investor.nvidia.com, 13. www.reuters.com, 14. www.reuters.com, 15. www.reuters.com, 16. blogs.nvidia.com, 17. www.reuters.com, 18. www.marketbeat.com, 19. stockanalysis.com, 20. www.tipranks.com, 21. www.marketbeat.com, 22. www.tipranks.com, 23. investor.nvidia.com, 24. investor.nvidia.com, 25. www.reuters.com, 26. www.reuters.com, 27. www.nasdaq.com, 28. www.reuters.com, 29. www.timesofisrael.com, 30. www.reuters.com, 31. www.barrons.com, 32. www.reuters.com, 33. investor.nvidia.com, 34. www.nasdaq.com
