Nvdia Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) opened the week at new all-time highs on Monday after the company announced two new high-profile autonomous vehicle partners.
At the International Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said both Uber and Volkswagen are now using Nvidia chips and technology to help handle the heavy processing load involved in driverless auto performance.
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Uber and Volkswagen join a long and growing list of Nvidia AV partners that already includes Tesla ( TSLA) and China’s Baidu ( BIDU).
Uber has reportedly been using Nvidia technology since it first began testing a fleet of self-driving Volvo SC90 SUVs back in 2016. Nvidia said that fleet of vehicles is now logging more than 1 million test miles every 100 days.
NVDA reported that Volkwagen is integrating Nvidia’s Drive IX platform into its future AV lineup. The Nvidia Drive platform now has at least 320 companies utilizing its sensory processing capabilities around the world.
In addition to the AV announcement, Nvidia also said it will be delivering the first batch of its new Xavier processors in the first quarter of 2018. Huang said Nvidia plans to make the Xavier processors the centerpiece of its next-generation self-driving hardware platform.
Nvidia stock has been on a historic tear in the last three years, gaining more than 1,000 percent. Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya says the perfect storm of secular trends that has pushed Nvidia stock higher will continue to do so in 2018.
“Our overall top [semiconductor] sector pick is NVDA for its large growth opportunities and management’s consistent execution,” Arya says.
“We tend to be big fans of large companies with consistent execution — such as TXN, NVDA, and MCHP — and of smaller companies with the most earnings leverage from improving execution or restructuring or new-product tailwinds, such as at ON, CY, AMD and MRVL,” Arya says.
NVDA shareholders got some unexpected good news in the past week when Mizuho analyst Vijay Rakesh and others said major security issues with Intel Corporation ( INTC) chips could push even more market share Nvidia’s way.
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“While INTC does not see a financial or market share impact from the security issue and performance degradation with the vulnerability, we believe its high-performance customers might have a different take,” Rakesh said.
Bank of America has a “buy” rating and $251 price target for Nvidia stock.
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Nvidia Corporation (NVDA) Is Taking the Auto Industry By Storm originally appeared on usnews.com
