Nvidia's strong competitive position in the artificial intelligence market is unmatched, according to a top Wall Street firm.
Goldman Sachs reiterated its buy rating on the chipmaker's shares and raised its price target to the second highest of the 33 analysts who cover the stock, saying Nvidia's products will continue to dominate the machine-learning markets.
"We remain very bullish on Nvidia," analyst Toshiya Hari wrote in a note to clients Tuesday. "Equipped with Volta (new GPU architecture) and TensorRT (high performance deep learning inference optimizer), we believe Nvidia is better-positioned to address the Inferencing [machine learning AI] opportunity, a market historically dominated by CPUs (i.e., Intel)."
Hari raised his price target for Nvidia shares to $217 from $193. The new target is 15 percent higher than Tuesday's closing price and the second highest among analysts, according to FactSet. Evercore ISI has the most bullish target, at $250.
Nvidia spends nearly $2.5 billion a year to invest in its technology platform, Hari wrote. "Management believes (and we agree) that Nvidia has a sustainable competitive moat in the Datacenter — specifically, its scale," he wrote.
Nvidia shares hit an all-time high Tuesday after it announced its Pegasus artificial intelligence computer system, which will enable fully autonomous robotaxis.
The company said more than 25 firms were already developing robotaxi offerings using Nvidia technology, according to the analyst.
Nvidia shares have rallied nearly 190 percent during the previous 12 months through midday Wednesday, compared with the market's 19 percent gain. That performance ranks first in the entire S&P 500, according to FactSet.
Its shares are up 0.8 percent midday Wednesday after the report.
— CNBC's Michael Bloom contributed to this story.