Akash Network up 6% after HSBC hikes Nvidia price target

• Akash Network price rose 6% to $1.48 at the time of writing and was 150% up in two weeks.
• The AI related cryptocurrency has outperformed amid strong forecasts for the AI sector.
• HSBC has reaffirmed the buy rating for Nvidia, with price target up from $600 to $780.

Akash Network price rose 6% to $1.48 even as most major cap cryptocurrencies traded flat. Meanwhile, US stocks opened higher on Monday as the week began on a better note, with investor focus likely to be on Nvidia earnings and the Fed meeting at the Jackson Hole symposium. 

Ahead of that, HSBC has hiked the price target for Nvidia shares, up from $600 to $780. Can this outlook be replicated across AI-powered crypto tokens, like Akash Network?

Strong demand for Nvidia’s AI GPUs

A note by HSBC analyst Frank Lee reaffirmed the buy rating for the NVIDIA shares, with the bank’s outlook pegged on earnings potential driven by an expected boom in AI. There’s a lot of room for the company to grow in 2024 and 2025, Lee noted.

“We continue to see strong demand that continues to outpace supply, especially with regard to AI GPU shipments. We believe this will continue to be the case going into FY25e especially as the market has better visibility over US CSP cloud 2024e CAPEX expectations by late 4Q23,” the analyst explained.

The company’s shares popped more than 4% in early trading to $451.53 as of 10:35 am ET. The HSBC price target gave it an 80% or so upside premarket.

Akash Network to benefit from AI boom?

AI cryptocurrencies have in the past exploded on strong Nvidia earnings and revenue projections based on expected demand for artificial intelligence. As Nvidia’s chips powering AI gains massive traction, analysts say crypto projects such as Akash Network could benefit from the resulting pivot.

Projects such as Render (RNDR), Fetch.ai (FET) and Cortex (CTXC) could see significant traction. Today, Akash Network, a decentralised marketplace for cloud resources is outperforming the rest of AI tokens. The native token AKT is up more than 6% in the past 24 hours and 148% in the past two weeks to trade at $1.48.

Aiming to deliver the world’s first decentralised AI Supercloud, Akash has seen several AI models successfully deployed on its Akash GPU Testnet. Nvidia GPUs have been tested on the network as projects seek to leverage AI in dApps.

While other factors could impact AKT price down the road, it appears marrying blockchain technology and AI could be a powerful driver of adoption. Revolutionising the decentralised physical infrastructure networks (dePINs) will likely underpin AKT price performance.

AKT price reached $1.77 on August 20, 2023, which is some distance off its all-time high of $8.07 reached in April 2021.