Nvidia posts earnings record: Huang says AI's "inflection point has arrived"
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This illustration photograph shows Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang in Toulouse, France, on Feb. 18. Photo: Lionel Bonaventure / AFP via Getty Images
Nvidia on Wednesday delivered a revenue projection that exceeded expectations, and CEO Jensen Huang declared that "the agentic AI inflection point has arrived," providing more fuel for AI bulls.
Why it matters: Debate is swirling over the sustainability of the booming AI economy — and Nvidia is positioned squarely at the center of it.
Driving the news: Nvidia posted record sales and earnings in its most recent quarter.
- Revenue totaled $68.1 billion, up 73% from a year earlier.
- Net income was $42.96 billion, up 94%, with a gross margin of 75%.
- Context: S&P Capital IQ analysts had projected total revenue of $66.2 billion and net income of $35.8 billion for the period.
Zoom in: The results included a 75% increase in data-center revenue to $62.3 billion.
- The company also projected first-quarter revenue of $78 billion, which exceeded the $73 billion that Wall Street had expected, according to CNBC.
- The company's estimates do not include sales to China.
The big picture: Nvidia is soaring based on skyrocketing orders from the Big Tech data center companies.
- Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft alone are expected to deliver capital spending of around $650 billion this year, up from $31 billion a decade ago.
- Capex growth expectations in 2026 include 100% at Alphabet, 75% at Meta and 50% at Amazon, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives.
What they're saying: "The world is now awakened to the agentic AI inflection," Huang said on the company's earnings call.
- He said in a statement that the company is "the king of inference today" with its current Blackwell chips and that its next-generation Vera Rubin platform "will extend that leadership even further."
Yes, but: Concerns have been building about AI disrupting the broader economy.
- Huang dismissed fears about AI investments being unsustainable, saying that "compute equals revenues now" in what he called "this new industrial revolution."
- "The simple way to think about it is computing has changed," he said on the earnings call. "What used to be software running on computers ... has now gone into AI. In order to generate tokens, you need compute capacity, and that translates directly to growth, and that translates directly to revenues."
- CFO Colette Kress said agentic AI "adoption is skyrocketing and tokens are profitable, driving extreme urgency to scale up compute."
The impact: Nvidia shares rose about 3% in after-hours trading.
Editor's note: This story has been updated with additional details from Nvidia's conference call.
