NEW YORK, May 20, 2026, 16:35 EDT
- Nvidia said first-quarter revenue jumped 85% to $81.6 billion.
- Data-center sales reached $75.2 billion. Demand for AI infrastructure stayed strong.
- The company is looking for $91 billion in Q2 revenue, not counting China data-center compute sales.
Nvidia shares fell in late trading Wednesday as the AI chip giant reported record results again and guided to $91 billion in revenue for this quarter. Wall Street is still watching if the AI boom can stay ahead of strong expectations.
Nvidia shares settled 1.3% higher at $223.47, putting its market cap around $5.47 trillion. Before the earnings, traders were primed for as much as $355 billion to move in Nvidia’s market value, based on options positioning from Reuters.
Nvidia reported revenue of $81.6 billion for the quarter ended April 26, up from $44.1 billion the previous year. Net income jumped to $58.3 billion. Diluted GAAP earnings per share were $2.39.
Data center revenue, which drives Nvidia’s AI segment, hit $75.2 billion, jumping 92% from last year. The unit covers chips, networking hardware and full systems that cloud firms and other customers use to train and deploy AI models.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said the surge in AI factories is happening fast. “The buildout of AI factories — the largest infrastructure expansion in human history — is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” Huang said. He added that agentic AI, software that acts more on its own to get jobs done, is now starting to create value in companies and industries. NVIDIA Newsroom
Nvidia’s second-quarter forecast got more attention. The company said it expects revenue at $91 billion, give or take 2%. The forecast doesn’t include any data-center compute sales from China.
That caveat is important. China is still a key risk for Nvidia’s growth story, with U.S. export curbs and China’s tech rules capping what it can ship to a big AI market. Nvidia also cited rivals, product flaws, dependence on suppliers, and shifts in law as risks that could hit results.
Nvidia said it will give more cash back to shareholders. The board signed off on $80 billion more for buybacks, and the company bumped its quarterly dividend to 25 cents from just 1 cent.
Nvidia saw more than just core compute sales rise this quarter. Data-center compute revenue was $60.4 billion, up 77% from last year. Data-center networking sales grew 199% to $14.8 billion.
The competitive climate keeps getting tighter. AMD is looking to take share in AI accelerators as cloud players and chip partners pump money into custom silicon. Nvidia said it’s working with Google Cloud, Marvell, Coherent, Corning and Lumentum to hold onto its lead in AI infrastructure.
Matt Amberson, who runs ORATS, told Reuters ahead of the report that investors were “complacent about AI/capex.” Chris Murphy at Susquehanna, co-head of derivatives strategy, said the options market pointed to traders still looking for upside in Nvidia, at the same time as hedging gains in some of the other crowded semiconductor names. Reuters
Nvidia’s business isn’t in trouble, but expectations keep climbing. The company is now worth over $5 trillion. Even record revenue and a better outlook might not stop investors from wondering how much of the AI wave is baked into the share price.
