Wedbush analyst Dan Ives has a reputation for colorful quotes on tech stocks, and AI chip giant Nvidia has often been the target of his rhetorical arsenal.
On Thursday, he continued to make the bull case for Nvidia, comparing it to one of the greatest basketball players of all time.
"If you look at Nvidia here, this is LeBron in high school in terms of where this story is ultimately going," Ives told Bloomberg TV.
Later in the interview, he circled back to the comparison and said the reason why Nvidia resembles a young LeBron James is because it's so far ahead of any other competitor and is "the only game in town."
The remarks came as investors were sending Nvidia stock lower despite an earnings report that blew away forecasts late Wednesday.
But while Wall Street's concerns were focused on delays to the forthcoming Blackwell chips, Ives said CEO Jensen Huang put to rest those worries with revenue guidance that was still robust, even if it fell short of the most aggressive analyst views.
"They came. They delivered," he added about Nvidia earnings. "And I think for tech, this is going to put fuel in that rally."
Based on his channel checks in Asia, Ives estimated that Blackwell revenue could reach tens of billions dollars, attributing the company's vaguer guidance to Huang being reluctant to reveal his playbook.
He also touted a multiplier effect Nvidia has across the broader tech landscape, saying every dollar spent on its chips ripples through the sector by a factor of 8-10 times.
That's as Ives sees $1 trillion of capital expenditures on AI over the next three years—double his forecast from just six months ago.
Demand for Nvidia chips is also accelerating and widening beyond the so-called hyperscaler customers like Microsoft, OpenAI, Amazon, and Google, with other enterprises stepping up as more AI use cases emerge, he added.
"Rome wasn't built in a day, neither will the AI revolution," he predicted. "It's starting to come together."
Ives wasn't the only Wall Street analyst looking past the initial stock market reaction to Nvidia's earnings report. Most still put shares in the "buy" category.
Bank of America Global Research reiterated a buy rating and raised its price target on shares from $150 to $165, saying Nvidia remains the “key genAI cycle beneficiary” and imploring investors to “ignore quarterly noise.”
Nvidia stock closed Friday at $119.37, representing a weekly loss of about 8%.
“We think the AI rally has further to run, despite investors’ apparent disappointment with Nvidia’s rapid profit growth,” Thomas Matthews, Capital Economics’ head of markets, Asia Pacific, said in a note.
