Silicon Valley enters "NVIDIA Time"! Can the GTC Conference once again lead the semiconductor sector to "take off"?

If history repeats itself, Nvidia (NVDA.US)'s upcoming GTC 2026 conference may provide another catalyst for the stock.

According to Odaily, a group of Wells Fargo Bank analysts led by Aaron Rakers said, "We are buyers of Nvidia ahead of this event. While history does not simply repeat itself, it is worth emphasizing that in the past several years Nvidia’s stock has performed very strongly after GTC (outperforming the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index by over 30% within three months post-GTC)."

Technology sector investors will undoubtedly be focusing on this conference, which will take place from March 16 to 19 in San Jose, California. Company information indicates that OpenAI, Google DeepMind (GOOGL.US), Meta (META.US), Microsoft (MSFT.US), and Tesla (TSLA.US) will all participate in the main stage or major sessions.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang will deliver a keynote speech at 2:00 p.m. EST on Monday (March 16). Additionally, Huang will host an industry panel at 3:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday.

GF Securities believes that this event could be a catalyst not only for Nvidia but for the entire semiconductor sector. Nvidia is expected to showcase its second-generation co-packaged optics (CPO) switches. Analysts from the company said this could use TSMC’s (TSMC) co-packaged optics technology, but shipments are not expected to scale until 2027, reaching up to 80,000 units. Other possible announcements include updates on its Feynman GPU series—namely the Kyber NVL576 rack series.

Bank of America is also highly optimistic about Nvidia ahead of the conference, reiterating its “Buy” rating and a target price of $300.

BofA analyst Vivek Arya commented, "While we don’t expect a formal sales outlook for 2027-28, any details regarding mass production of the Rubin series (cyclical years 2027-28) would help bolster the currently subdued share price (forward P/E of 17x, near historical lows), as strong volumes for the Blackwell series have already generated $500 billion in cumulative sales."

Wells Fargo expects Nvidia to provide the latest updates on its product pipeline.

Rakers stated: “Pipeline expansion of over $500 billion + extension over time + more background from Nvidia, including the disclosure that they have deployed over 9 GW of Blackwell (versus less than 4.5 GW for Hopper). Since Blackwell began shipping at the end of calendar 2024, we estimate Nvidia has booked around $240–250 billion of its over $500 billion target for calendar 2026—if the target is raised above $600 billion, that would be positive. We are also watching if Nvidia will update its forecast for annual artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure spending to reach $3–4 trillion by 2030.”

Stocks potentially affected by GTC developments include: AMD (AMD.US), TSMC, Broadcom (AVGO.US), Intel (INTC.US), Marvell (MRVL.US), and various networking equipment companies.