Nvidia delivered a beat on the top and bottom line when it reported its fiscal first quarter earnings on Wednesday afternoon.
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The stock ping-ponged after hours following the results as the company once again excluded China from its guidance for its second quarter. As the call ended, shares were down just over 1%.
Here are the key numbers:
- Revenue: $81.6 billion vs. $79.15 billion estimate
- Adjusted EPS: $1.87 vs. $1.77 estimate
- Data center revenue: $75.2 billion vs. $73.49 billion estimate
- Gross margin: 74.9% vs. 75.1% estimate
- Q2 revenue forecast: $91.0 billion vs estimated $87.2 billion
The $5 trillion chipmaker, the world’s largest company by market cap, is closely watched as a larger barometer for the AI industry.
Nvidia announced that it had authorized an additional $80 billion stock buyback and increased its quarterly cash dividend from 1 cent per share to 25 cents per share.
Huang sees huge potential in the agentic age
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang gave a full-throated defense of his earlier statement that cumulative demand for the company’s most advanced chips would reach “at least $1 trillion” through the end of 2027.
“I have every expectation it’s going to grow from here for fundamentally good reasons,” Huang said during the company’s earnings call about his outlook for hyperscalers’ spending. “This is the way computing is going to work in the future. And if they don’t have the compute, they won’t have the revenues. It is very clear.”
Huang said that frontier AI model makers like OpenAI and Anthropic are surging in value at unheard-of rates.
“The fact that they can grow within one month, what some of the SaaS companies would have taken a decade to grow, tells you something,” he said.
Later, Huang said that the rise of agentic AI will fuel an enormous demand for compute as users deploy large numbers of agents, which, in turn, deploy even more subagents to complete tasks.
“My sense is that the world is going to have billions of agents,” he said. “Not today, I mean, we’re going to grow into it, but we’ll have billions of agents. And those billions of agents will all use tools.”
China crunch continues
Nvidia CEO Colette Kress said that the company didn’t ship any of its Hopper data center products to China in the quarter, compared to $4.6 billion in the year-ago period.
“While the US government has approved licenses for H200 to be shipped to China-based customers, we have yet to generate any revenue, and we are uncertain whether any imports will be allowed into the country,” Kress said during the earnings call.
CEO Jensen Huang said in April that Nvidia’s market share in China had “dropped to zero.” Previously, he estimated that the Chinese AI market alone would be worth $50 billion annually.
After joining President Donald Trump and other CEOs on Trump’s state visit to China, Huang said that China’s market would open “over time.”
Nvidia’s run of success is also facing some concerns. Rival chipmakers like Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have gained ground in recent months and announced major partnerships with Meta and OpenAI.
Amazon has also signaled that it may start selling its trainium AI chips, which would put it into direct competition with Nvidia. Earlier this week, Google formed a joint venture with Blackstone to sell access to AI compute via its TPU chips.
Nvidia says the Iran war hasn’t had a big impact yet
In its regulatory filing, Nvidia said that the Iran war and the broader instability in the Middle East have yet to majorly affect the company.
“Our global supply chain for our networking products, including our Israel operations of approximately 5,900 employees supporting research and development, operations, and sales and marketing, has not been significantly impacted by the conflict in the Middle East,” the company wrote in its 10-Q filing.
Nvidia stated that if the “conflict escalates or extends,” that view could change.
“It could affect future product development, supply chain, and revenue, and create business uncertainty,” the company wrote.
Iran has targeted data centers in the Middle East during the conflict. Amazon said in March that three of its data centers were damaged by drone strikes.
Nvidia stock has gained over 15% since the start of 2026, bouncing back stronger on reignited AI enthusiasm.
