New York, May 21, 2026, 08:03 (EDT)
Nvidia was flat before the U.S. open Thursday. Premarket pricing put the stock at $223.29, down 0.08%. The chipmaker put out a $91 billion revenue forecast for the second quarter and said it would boost cash returned to shareholders. The numbers were strong but shares saw little move.
Nvidia holds the top spot in market value and is seen as the main public gauge of the pace in AI data-center expansion. Reuters said U.S. stock futures barely moved after a 1.1% jump in the S&P 500 Wednesday; Nvidia’s stock move lagged its headline results.
Nvidia reported first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from last year. Data-center revenue climbed 92% to $75.2 billion. Adjusted earnings per diluted share came in at $1.87. The board cleared another $80 billion for share buybacks and increased its quarterly dividend to 25 cents from 1 cent.
Wall Street was looking for $78.86 billion in revenue and adjusted EPS of $1.76, LSEG data cited by Reuters showed. The revenue forecast for the current quarter, plus or minus 2%, beat the $86.84 billion consensus.
NVIDIA founder and CEO Jensen Huang said “AI factories” are being built at “extraordinary speed” and added that “agentic AI has arrived.” These are data centers for training or running artificial intelligence. Agentic AI is the type that can do multi-step actions with less user direction. NVIDIA Newsroom
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told analysts the company is set to outpace “hyperscale capex,” a term for the big cloud players’ capital spending, as more AI-focused cloud companies and industrials boost demand outside of the leading public cloud buyers. “We should be growing faster than hyperscale capex,” Huang said. Reuters
Nvidia delivered “another beat,” but it was “essentially priced in,” eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne said. Dan Coatsworth at AJ Bell was direct: “Investors want the world from Nvidia.” Reuters
Wall Street’s take split on mood, not on where the stock’s headed. Jefferies’ trading-desk analyst Jeffrey Favuzza called the post-earnings move a “knife fight.” But Thomas Monteiro at Investing.com said the report was the “cleanest beat” in several quarters and saw “no visible signs” of any demand slowdown. MarketWatch
It’s no longer just about Nvidia getting more GPU sales. Google, owned by Alphabet, and Amazon are both putting money into their own chips for their clouds. AMD is also aiming at the AI accelerator space. The race is shifting to inference, where trained AI models generate answers.
Still, the risk side is easy to lay out. Slower spending from big cloud clients, a shift to more internal chips, or fresh supply issues once Nvidia starts shipping Vera Rubin could all squeeze the shares. Nvidia’s second-quarter guidance counts on zero data-center compute revenue from China, with export curbs still a factor.
Nvidia has another tool with its buyback. Buying back shares can lift earnings per share because it cuts the share count, if Nvidia keeps buying and shares don’t lose value first. The company reported it sent about $20 billion back to shareholders last quarter in buybacks and dividends.
Nvidia held up its end for the AI trade, but didn’t blow the doors off. That’s key for the broader market ahead of the open. The chipmaker keeps topping forecasts, but now the market is testing if more AI dollars can keep driving profits at the same pace.
