Nvidia reported better-than-expected earnings and revenue on Wednesday, and said sales growth this quarter will remain above 50%, signaling to Wall Street that demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure shows no sign of fading.
The stock, which is up 35% this year after almost tripling in 2024, slipped in extended trading as data center revenue came up short of estimates for the second straight period. Shares pared the losses Thursday.
Here's how the company did, compared with estimates from analysts polled by LSEG:
Earnings per share : $1.05 adjusted vs. $1.01 estimated
: $1.05 adjusted vs. $1.01 estimated Revenue: $46.74 billion vs. $46.06 billion estimated
Nvidia said it expects revenue this quarter to be $54 billion, plus or minus 2%, though that number does not assume any H20 shipments to China. Analysts were expecting revenue of $53.1 billion, according to LSEG.
The company's 2026 second quarter results confirmed that Nvidia's data center business remains entrenched in the global AI buildout. Nvidia finance chief Colette Kress told analysts on an earnings call that the company expects between $3 and $4 trillion in AI infrastructure spending by the end of the decade.
Overall company revenue rose 56% in the quarter from $30.04 billion a year ago, Nvidia said. Year-over-year revenue has now exceeded 50% for nine straight quarters, dating back to mid-2023, when the generative AI boom started to show up in Nvidia's results. However, the second quarter marked Nvidia's slowest period of growth during that stretch.
During the quarter, after CEO Jensen Huang's meeting with President Donald Trump, Nvidia signaled that it expected to get U.S. licenses to ship the H20 chip to China. The processor, which was custom built for sales to China, cost Nvidia $4.5 billion in writedowns and could have added $8 billion in second-quarter sales if it had been commercially available during the period, the company previously said.
Nvidia said it sold no H20 chips to China during the quarter, bu benefited from the release of $180 million worth of H20 inventory to a customer outside of China. Kress said that Nvidia could ship between $2 billion and $5 billion in H20 revenue during the quarter if the geopolitical environment permits.
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