NEW YORK, May 22, 2026, 04:14 EDT
- Nvidia ended the session off 1.77% at $219.51. The chipmaker reported record revenue for the quarter and guided above analyst forecasts.
- The S&P 500 and Nasdaq gained Thursday, while Nvidia fell. The chipmaker’s decline looked stock-specific, not a sector move.
- Investors are now watching if Nvidia can hold its AI advantage as more demand moves to “inference,” the step where trained AI models are actually used.
Nvidia shares slipped after the chipmaker posted another record quarter and gave a $91 billion sales outlook. Some investors booked gains and some questioned if that sales target justifies Nvidia’s heavy valuation in the AI rally. The stock finished Thursday down 1.77% at $219.51. The Nasdaq Composite edged up 0.09%. The S&P 500 climbed 0.17%.
Nvidia faces more than just questions about beating estimates now. Investors are looking at how long the AI buildout can keep going—through 2027 and after—and if competitors will start to take pieces of the business as buyers look to cheaper or more niche chips.
Nvidia said its first-quarter revenue jumped 85% from last year to $81.6 billion, with data-center revenue climbing 92% to $75.2 billion, another record. The board boosted the quarterly dividend to 25 cents from 1 cent and approved another $80 billion for stock buybacks.
Nvidia is guiding for $91 billion in revenue for the quarter, give or take 2%. The company said that view leaves out any data-center compute revenue from China, keeping a major uncertainty in play for the stock.
Wall Street was looking for $86.84 billion in Q2 revenue, LSEG data cited by Reuters said. “Nvidia delivered another beat, but at this point that’s essentially priced in,” said eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne. He said investors want evidence the AI buildout has “durability into 2027 and 2028.” Reuters
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told analysts the company should be “growing faster than hyperscale capex,” talking about the outlays from major cloud players. Nvidia has started calling data centers built for AI “AI factories.” Its chips still dominate most of those workloads. Reuters
The focus is changing for Nvidia’s rivals. Reuters flagged before earnings that Nvidia is under pressure in inference—using an AI model—from AMD, Intel and Google’s custom silicon. John Belton at Gabelli Funds called the main risk whether “the Nvidia ecosystem” keeps its hold as more inference jobs go live. Reuters
AMD ramped up the rhetoric Friday. CEO Lisa Su said the CPU market is tight worldwide, driven by higher demand from AI inferencing and agentic AI, meaning more independent systems. The company plans to put over $10 billion into Taiwan’s AI industry.
Analysts still aren’t moving away from Nvidia. Morgan Stanley analysts kept calling Nvidia an “unassailable” leader and their “best value” pick. Jefferies analysts also stuck with Nvidia, saying the stock “looked remarkably cheap the more it grows,” Investopedia reported. Investopedia
But the risk is that expectations are running ahead of the business’s ability to top them. Nvidia’s data-center compute forecast still leaves out China, there’s more focus on custom chips, and a memory or supply shortfall could hold back shipments even with solid demand. A market that barely reacts to 85% revenue growth is saying one thing: the bar is higher now.
Nvidia is set for two investor updates in the near term. The company will appear at TD Cowen’s technology, media and telecom conference on May 28, then at BofA’s global technology conference on June 4.
Nasdaq pre-market was active at the open on Friday, with trading set from 4:00 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. Eastern. Monday, May 25, is Memorial Day, so Friday marks the final regular session before the holiday break in U.S. equities.
