Nvidia reported 96.2 billion dollars in quarterly revenue Wednesday, up 106 percent from a year ago, with data center revenue of 89 billion. Both beat expectations comfortably. Then the company did something it has never done before and gave a forecast for an entire fiscal year.
Nvidia expects roughly 70 percent revenue growth in fiscal 2028, which implies somewhere around 690 to 700 billion dollars. Analyst consensus had been about 570 billion. The stock rose almost 5 percent after hours.
The Forecast Is the News
Nvidia has historically refused to guide beyond a single quarter, and that refusal was itself a piece of information. A company that will not project further out is telling you something about its own visibility.
Putting a number on a year that has not started is a deliberate act. It is Jensen Huang answering the bubble argument with a figure he now has to hit, and it removes the ambiguity that had been letting both bulls and bears tell their preferred story.
The Quarter Itself
Revenue of 96.2 billion against consensus around 92.2 billion, up 18 percent from the previous quarter. Data center at 89 billion, up 117 percent year over year. Non GAAP earnings per share of 2.22 dollars against guidance of 2.06 to 2.09. Gross margin at 75 percent.
Guidance for the current quarter is 108 billion dollars plus or minus 2 percent. That is another 12 percent sequential increase on a base that already looks impossible, and it is the number the year ahead forecast is built on.
The Constraint Is Supply
The most revealing thing Huang said was about why the forecast is not higher. Demand, he said, is much greater than 70 percent. Supply is what allows the company to confidently deliver 70 percent.
That is a company describing a ceiling it cannot lift by selling harder. Manufacturing capacity, advanced packaging and memory supply all sit outside Nvidia’s direct control, and they determine the number regardless of how many customers are waiting.
The Circular Financing Question
Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress addressed the criticism directly, which is notable because the company has largely declined to engage with it. The argument is that Nvidia invests in companies that then spend the money on Nvidia hardware, which shows up as Nvidia revenue.
Her answer was that the company sees it differently and expects those partners to become the largest technology companies in history. That is a real position and it is not a rebuttal of the mechanism. Our coverage of the reported Perplexity talks laid out how quickly those investments have been accumulating.
What Huang Actually Argued
His framing was that artificial intelligence has reached an inflection point, that its output is doing useful work, and that compute is now revenue rather than research spending.
The drivers he named were a wave of new labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling at once, an open model ecosystem, and physical artificial intelligence coming online. Whether all four hold is the question the 70 percent number depends on.
Why This Moves More Than One Stock
Semiconductors have carried an outsized share of index gains for two years, and Nvidia is the largest single component of that. Its results now function as a macro event rather than a company one.
Futures moved on the release, which tells you the market read it as information about the whole trade rather than about one balance sheet. That relationship is itself a risk, because concentration works in both directions.
What Would Break the Thesis
Three things. Customers deciding they have bought enough for now, which shows up as orders pushed rather than cancelled. A competitor shipping something adequate at meaningfully lower cost. Or the companies doing the buying failing to generate returns that justify continuing.
None of those appeared in this quarter. The honest observation is that none of them would appear in the quarter before they happened either, which is the nature of a cycle turning.
What Comes Next This Week
The Jackson Hole symposium begins today and runs through Saturday, with Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh delivering his first address in the role on Friday. That has not happened, and anything claiming to know what he said is wrong.
Those two events together, a blowout from the largest company in the index and a new Fed chair’s debut, make this the most consequential week markets have had in months.
One caution about how a quarter like this gets read. A beat plus a raised forecast is unambiguously good news for the company, and it says considerably less about whether the price already reflected it.
Stocks that have run this hard for this long tend to require increasingly extraordinary results simply to hold their level, which is a different bar from doing well. The after hours move was under five percent on a report that beat consensus by four billion dollars and doubled the forward outlook, and that ratio is itself information.
Frequently Asked Questions
What did Nvidia report?
Revenue of 96.2 billion dollars for the quarter, up 106 percent year over year, with data center revenue of 89 billion and non GAAP earnings per share of 2.22 dollars. Gross margin was 75 percent.
What is the year ahead forecast?
Roughly 70 percent revenue growth in fiscal 2028, implying around 690 to 700 billion dollars. Analyst consensus had been near 570 billion. It is the first full year forecast the company has given.
Why is that unusual?
Nvidia has historically guided only one quarter ahead. Committing to a full year number is a deliberate response to arguments that demand is a bubble.
What did the stock do?
It rose about 4.7 percent after hours to roughly 219 dollars, and index futures moved higher on the release.
Why is supply the limit?
Huang said demand exceeds 70 percent growth but supply is what the company can confidently deliver. Manufacturing capacity, packaging and memory availability sit largely outside Nvidia’s control.
What is the circular financing concern?
That Nvidia invests in customers who spend the money on Nvidia hardware. The chief financial officer said the company sees it differently and expects those partners to become very large companies.
