Nvidia's 70% Growth Target: Visionary Roadmap or Bubble Buffer?

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is attempting to silence the skeptics with a staggering projection: 70% year-over-year revenue growth for next year, as TechCrunch first reported. According to the outlet, analysts expect Nvidia to close its current fiscal year at roughly $400 billion in revenue, meaning Huang is eyeing a leap to approximately $680 billion.

In an appearance at the Goldman Sachs Communacopia + Technology conference, Huang argued that Nvidia is the "foundational platform" of the AI industry, claiming the company tracks every gigawatt of power and data center "shell" globally. He pointed to the massive scale of current hardware—noting that a single GPU setup can cost $8.5 million—and reported that a specific system combining 36 Grace CPUs with 72 Blackwell GPUs is seeing 27% month-to-month sales growth.

However, the sustainability of this growth is questionable. TechCrunch reports that much of this expansion is fueled by AI-native startups spending venture capital on their own infrastructure. More concerning are the questions regarding "circular deals," where Nvidia invests in companies that subsequently purchase its hardware. While Huang cheekily dismissed these concerns by claiming a high return on investment—joking that putting in $1 brings back $100—the parallel to the collapse of Lucent Technologies during the early internet era is a haunting one.

Despite Huang's insistence that he has seen $100 billion in contracts and is only pursuing "sure things," the company faces a tightening vice. TechCrunch notes increasing competition from hyperscalers like Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, as well as AI labs OpenAI and Anthropic, alongside startups such as Etched and the newly public Cerebras. As the industry matures and efficiency increases, the era of unchecked capex may be the only thing Nvidia is truly tracking.