Zacks.com on May 26 announced its latest Analyst Blog list and included the VanEck Semiconductor ETF SMH among the featured exchange-traded funds, putting the ETF at the center of a discussion about semiconductor and AI-driven momentum in the market.
The placement followed a week in which NVIDIA dominated headlines with first-quarter fiscal 2027 results that delivered a string of eye-popping numbers: record revenues of $81.6 billion, up 85% year over year, and data center revenues that rose 92% from a year earlier. NVIDIA’s fiscal first-quarter earnings beat the Zacks consensus estimate by 5.7%, while revenues beat the consensus by 3.6%. The company also raised its quarterly dividend to 25 cents per share and disclosed that its short-term average price target stood at $276.46, implying a 23.7% upside from a last closing price of $223.47.
Those results and outlook items were listed alongside product and partnership developments that analysts and ETF trackers cited as the drivers behind the Zacks feature. NVIDIA said its AI infrastructure is deployed across nearly 40 countries and that infrastructure represents $50 trillion in GDP. The company also said its physical AI business has exceeded $9 billion in revenues over the past 12 months. During the fiscal first quarter NVIDIA unveiled the Vera Rubin platform, expanded an alliance with Google Cloud to advance agentic and physical AI, and enhanced work with auto makers — developments the company said put it on track to begin production shipments of Vera Rubin in the second half of 2026.
Zacks grouped SMH with a set of ETFs tied closely to the technology sector and to NVIDIA’s hardware and software cycle. The other funds on the Analyst Blog list included Fidelity MSCI Information Technology Index ETF FTEC, Vanguard Information Technology Index Fund ETF Shares VGT, iShares U.S. Technology ETF IYW and State Street Technology Select Sector SPDR ETF XLK. The inclusion framed SMH as part of a cluster of funds whose holdings and performance are sensitive to the same catalysts that moved NVIDIA’s headline figures.
The contrast inside those headlines provides the story’s friction. Despite the record revenue and the bullish short-term price target, NVIDIA slipped around 1.6% in after-hours trading on May 20, underlining that strong fundamental prints do not always produce an immediate, unambiguous market response. At the same time, ETFs such as SMH trade on aggregated exposure to many chipmakers, and their fortunes turn on more than one company’s quarter. The analyst feature noted that AI-related demand is a central narrative, even as the semiconductor supply chain remains materially dependent on Taiwan Semiconductor for advanced packaging and manufacturing capacity.
For investors watching smh stock, the timing of NVIDIA’s product rollouts and partnerships is the most concrete near-term calendar item. Vera Rubin’s public unveiling and the company’s statement that production shipments are on track for the second half of 2026 gives a specific milestone to monitor. If Vera Rubin enters production and if the expanded Google Cloud work and other partnerships translate into measurable revenue streams, those developments could validate the growth assumptions baked into current price targets; if not, the divergence that produced the May 20 after-hours dip could persist.
The single, consequential question after Zacks’ May 26 selection is now clear: will the arrival of Vera Rubin production shipments in the second half of 2026 and the rollout of NVIDIA’s partnership-driven use cases turn headline-beating quarters into sustained gains for semiconductor-focused funds such as SMH? The Analyst Blog placement puts that question on investors’ calendars and makes SMH a fund to watch as the next product and production milestones unfold.
