Seaport reiterates Sell on Nvidia with $180 price target, calling aggressive finance bundling a reaction to competitive pressure
What happened
Jay Goldberg of Seaport Research Partners reiterated a Sell rating on Nvidia with a $180 price target in a note Thursday (covered by Barron's Friday morning), about 15% below NVDA's $212 close Thursday. Nvidia shares were up 1.3% premarket Friday after sliding 4.4% Thursday in the broad AI selloff. Goldberg conceded the near term looks fine — 'Nvidia is heading into early 2027 in a good position,' record sales continue, and the stock could even be a safe haven as peers struggle — but argued 'competitive pressures are mounting' and that Nvidia's aggressive finance bundling is 'a reaction to competitive pressure and a strategic tension at the heart of their business.' A core pillar of his thesis: roughly 55 GW of data-center operations have been announced for next year, but 'no one thinks there are enough electricians, gas turbines and utility interconnect to get beyond 30 GW,' so a large share of the mountain of orders may never materialize.
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Start your free 14-day trialWho’s affected
- NVDA (directly; counter-consensus Sell with ~15% downside to target)
- SOXX / semiconductor stocks (thesis questions how much of announced AI demand converts to real orders)
- AI-infra financing complex (CoreWeave and neoclouds; finance-bundling deals central to thesis)
- Mag 7 broadly (adds ammo to AI-capex sustainability debate driving rotation)
Sources