Nvidia stock surged to a record high on Thursday after the U.S. government gave final clearance for the company to export several billion dollars in AI chips to the United Arab Emirates.
The Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security recently issued the export licenses under a bilateral trade agreement reached in May, Bloomberg reported. As part of the pact, the UAE agreed to invest $1.4 trillion in the U.S. over the next decade.
The U.S. has a preliminary agreement with the Emirates' to allow it to import 500,000 of Nvidia's most advanced AI chips per year, starting in 2025, Reuters reported in May. The agreement was at least through 2027, but there was a chance it could be in place until 2030.
Nvidia shares gained 1.8% to close at 192.57, with a market value approaching $4.7 trillion. Earlier in the session, it hit an all-time high of 195.30.
Also Thursday, Nvidia stock scored a Street-high price target from a Wall Street analyst on continued momentum for the buildout of AI data centers.
Cantor Fitzgerald analyst C.J. Muse reiterated his overweight, or buy, rating on Nvidia stock and upped his price target to 300 from 240.
"We are still in the early innings of a multitrillion (dollar) AI infrastructure buildout," Muse said in a client note.
In addition to hyperscale cloud service providers investing in artificial intelligence, other drivers of the market include AI startups known as neoclouds, enterprise adoption of AI and the emergence of physical AI in the form of autonomous vehicles and robots, he said.
"Thus, this is not a bubble, and we are still in the early innings of this investment cycle," Muse said.
The information technology industry is shifting from traditional computing to accelerated AI computing, he said.