Nvidia, the world’s biggest company, has revealed its sales are soaring — delivering a thunderous boost to the US economy, Wall Street and Americans’ retirement savings.
The chipmaker, which has been the engine of the AI boom and a key driver of the market’s rally, delivered another blockbuster quarter that reassured investors the tech revolution is going nowhere.
‘There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,’ CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday. ‘We see something very different.’
The company reported $57billion in sales, smashing analyst forecasts of $54.9 billion.
Profit hit $31.9billion for the past three months, up 65 per cent on last year — and a staggering 245 per cent surge in just two years.
Shares by as much as six per cent in after-hours trading, as Huang boasted that ‘sales are off the charts.’ Crucially, they helped boost the wider stock market, nudging the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq higher.
Wednesday’s result is a major relief for Wall Street. Nvidia’s earnings have become the Super Bowl of the stock market — except they happen every three months, not each February.
Founded in 1993, Nvidia spent decades as a niche maker of chips for home computers before the AI boom transformed it into the most important force in global markets. It is now viewed as a bellwether for both the tech industry and the stock market as a whole.
Nvidia boss Jensen Huang has promised explosive AI growth — but Wall Street is bracing for a violent reaction to Wednesday’s results
The $5trillion chipmaker supplies about 90 per cent of the physical tech that powers America’s artificial intelligence boom.
Nvidia’s earnings were buoyed by $500billion in chip orders in the next two years. Data centers generated $51.2billion.
‘Blackwell sales are off the charts,’ Huang said of Nvidia’s newest flagship AI processors. ‘And cloud GPUs are sold out. Compute demand keeps accelerating.’
Huang added: ‘We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.’
Expectations have become a bit of a burden for the gigantic company. Nvidia has beaten forecasts so consistently over the past year that investors now demand perfect results every time.
And the stakes could not be higher. Nvidia’s quarterly numbers routinely influence the direction of the entire US stock market.
This year, major indexes have relied heavily on companies investing in AI. Nearly 30 per cent of the S&P 500 index is concentrated in five companies: Nvidia, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Google’s parent Alphabet.
That reliance has worried some investors. The big swings could make the entire US market extremely volatile. And because most Americans — and millions more around the world — have their retirement savings tied to the US stock market, any downturn hits them directly.
The S&P 500 has fallen over the past week. A falling S&P 500 matters: the index underpins most 401(k)s and pension funds, meaning this week’s slump directly affects Americans’ retirement savings – but Wednesday’s Nvidia earnings could turn the market around
Today’s bumper earnings and share price spike come after a rocky week that has seen Nvidia’s stock fall around 11 per cent as the broader AI rally cools.
Tech giants like Meta, down 19 per cent this month, and Oracle, down 20 per cent, have been hammered too, suggesting investors may be reassessing whether Silicon Valley’s AI spending spree is sustainable.
The Nasdaq has already fallen more than 4 per cent over the past week, with traders warning that sentiment has shifted into what analysts call ‘extreme fear’.
Analysts expect Nvidia’s earnings will swing investors into optimism.
Huang’s company will lose its spotlight early Thursday.
Nvidia may take center stage today, but Walmart’s numbers and the jobs report tomorrow turn this into a triple whammy of crucial economic signals.
