Nvidia’s blowout earnings send shares up nearly 10%, ease AI demand fears

Nvidia’s stock jumped roughly 8.5% to 10% on Thursday after the chipmaker reported $96.2 billion in quarterly revenue and issued a forecast that reassured investors AI demand remains strong. The results pushed Nvidia’s market value up more than $400 billion to about $5.49 trillion, cementing its place as the world’s most valuable company, while CEO Jensen Huang’s personal fortune rose by $14.5 billion, making him the world’s seventh-richest person, ahead of Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

What did Nvidia actually report?

Nvidia posted $96.2 billion in revenue for the quarter, more than double what it made in the same period a year earlier, with earnings per share of $2.22. Both figures beat Wall Street consensus estimates of $92.2 billion in revenue and $2.09 in earnings per share, according to FactSet data cited by Forbes. The company’s data center division alone brought in $89 billion, up 117% year-over-year, reflecting how central Nvidia’s chips have become to the broader tech industry’s AI buildout. Nvidia also guided for roughly $108 billion in revenue next quarter, with analyst Matt Britzman of Hargreaves Lansdown saying that guidance points to revenue “comfortably above $110bn.”

What did the company say about future demand?

CFO Colette Kress told investors Nvidia expects 70% revenue growth for fiscal year 2028, which runs from February 2027 through January 2028. Huang went further, saying actual demand is “much greater than 70%” but that Nvidia is constrained by how much product it can supply — pointing to ongoing bottlenecks at manufacturing partner Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. and a continued shortage of memory chips, a key component in Nvidia’s systems. Huang said the company has “never forecasted” a full year in advance before, but now has “a lot greater visibility” across its supply chain. He also described AI as having “reached its inflection point,” noting that unlike a year ago, when a single lab drove most of the buildout, there are now multiple frontier labs, a growing open-model ecosystem, and expanding demand from startups and “physical AI” applications.

How did the market and analysts react?

Nvidia shares rose nearly 10% Thursday, a notable reversal given the stock had fallen the day after earnings in each of the previous four quarters despite beating estimates each time. The rally lifted other chip stocks, including Broadcom and Intel, along with AI infrastructure firm Nebius, while CoreWeave traded roughly flat. Several investment firms raised their price targets: Raymond James lifted its target to $515 from $352, the most bullish on Wall Street, while Bernstein raised its target to $400 from $315 and JPMorgan to $320 from $280. Portfolio manager Siddy Jobe of Econopolis Wealth Management said the results show Nvidia’s valuation “is cheap” with “plenty, plenty of upside,” while Paul Meeks of Freedom Capital Markets said he remains “very bullish” on the company and the broader AI sector.

What risks or competitive threats were flagged?

Analysts pointed to a longer-term threat to Nvidia’s near-monopoly on advanced AI chips from custom semiconductors being developed by hyperscalers and AI labs, including OpenAI, as well as cheaper alternatives emerging from Chinese suppliers. For now, sources say those pressures remain limited. Nvidia is also trying to broaden its customer base beyond the handful of giant cloud providers: its AI Clouds, industrial and enterprise (ACIE) customer segment brought in $40.3 billion in the quarter, up 138% annually. The company has also taken on a financing role in the sector, providing funding to firms like OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX to support AI infrastructure spending, which has fed investor worries about circular financing arrangements and stretched capital expenditure across the industry.

Why does this matter beyond Nvidia?

Nvidia’s chips underpin the AI systems built by Amazon, Meta, Google and Microsoft, and roughly 40% of the U.S. stock market is concentrated in ten companies with heavy AI investments, according to BBC. That means Nvidia’s results function as a bellwether for confidence in the entire AI trade, which had wobbled in July when chip stocks briefly lost $1 trillion in combined value before recovering. Separately, Forbes reported that Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, an open-weight AI model hosting platform, for $12.9 billion — more than double the company’s 2023 valuation of $4.5 billion, when Nvidia had invested $235 million in it.

How do the sources’ figures compare?

CNBC and BBC describe the earnings-day stock move slightly differently — CNBC cites a roughly 10% single-day jump, while BBC notes a 4.7% after-hours rise following the Wednesday report, reflecting different measurement points around the two-day reaction. BBC’s next-quarter revenue guidance figure of $108 billion aligns with what CNBC and Forbes report as part of the 70% annual growth forecast for fiscal 2028.

Sources

• CNBC — Nvidia jumps nearly 10% after blockbuster earnings boost AI confidence · Nvidia wows Wall Street with a strong quarter and an eye-popping sales forecast
• Forbes
• BBC Business

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