SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nvidia earnings surged again as the chipmaker posted record fiscal fourth-quarter results and forecast about $78 billion in current-quarter sales that topped Wall Street estimates Wednesday. The outlook underscored how demand for the company’s AI data center chips is still rising even as investors debate how long the boom can last, Feb. 25, 2026.
In its fourth-quarter earnings release, Nvidia said revenue for the quarter ended Jan. 25 reached a record $68.1 billion, up 20% from the prior quarter and up 73% from a year earlier. For fiscal 2026, Nvidia said revenue totaled $215.9 billion, up 65%. Net income rose 94% to $43.0 billion, while non-GAAP earnings per share were $1.62.
Nvidia earnings: Record Q4 revenue and a $78 billion forecast
The Nvidia earnings forecast calls for fiscal first-quarter revenue of $78.0 billion, plus or minus 2%, and says it is not assuming any data center compute revenue from China in that outlook.
Analysts had been looking for roughly $72.6 billion, according to Reuters’ report on the results. Nvidia shares were little changed in after-hours trading as investors weighed another strong beat against expectations that have climbed with the stock’s rapid rise.
Data center still dominates the revenue mix
The Nvidia earnings report showed Nvidia’s data center business generated a record $62.3 billion in the quarter — about 91% of total revenue — as cloud providers, model builders and enterprises continued to buy GPUs and networking to run and scale generative AI. Gaming revenue was $3.7 billion, while professional visualization revenue was $1.3 billion and automotive revenue was $604 million.
“Computing demand is growing exponentially — the agentic AI inflection point has arrived,” CEO Jensen Huang said in the release. He pointed to Grace Blackwell systems and the company’s next platform, Vera Rubin, as key parts of the roadmap.
Cash returns, China and competition are back in focus
For fiscal 2026, Nvidia said it returned $41.1 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and dividends, and it plans to pay its next quarterly dividend of $0.01 per share April 1 to shareholders of record March 11. The company also said it will begin including stock-based compensation expense in its non-GAAP financial measures starting in the first quarter of fiscal 2027.
In its annual filing — Nvidia’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended Jan. 25 — the company detailed risks tied to export restrictions, customer concentration and a fast-moving competitive landscape. Reuters reported that two customers accounted for 36% of sales in fiscal 2026, while rivals including AMD and in-house chips at large cloud companies remain in the spotlight.
Investors can also revisit management’s commentary through the earnings call webcast, where executives fielded questions about supply, pricing and what comes next as AI spending broadens beyond training into inference and enterprise deployment.
What the latest results say about the AI cycle
The scale of the quarter — $68.1 billion in revenue in three months — has made Nvidia earnings a de facto scoreboard for AI infrastructure spending. Big technology companies are still committing huge sums to data centers, and Nvidia has argued that wider adoption of “agentic” systems will keep demand elevated as more workloads move from experimentation into production.
But the market’s measured reaction shows how much is already priced in. After more than a year of outsized beats, investors are scrutinizing whether growth stays this steep as the base gets larger, competition intensifies and restrictions limit sales in China.
Continuity check: how Nvidia earnings climbed to $68 billion a quarter
The latest results extend a multi-year run that accelerated with the AI boom. In May 2024, Nvidia helped ignite the rally when it forecast $28 billion in quarterly sales and unveiled a 10-for-1 stock split, Reuters reported at the time.
By August 2024, Nvidia was projecting $32.5 billion in sales for the following quarter, but shares still slipped as “growth-hungry” investors focused on what might come after the initial surge, according to another Reuters report.
And in November 2025, Nvidia forecast $65 billion in fiscal fourth-quarter sales as it worked to calm renewed bubble fears, Reuters wrote. That set the stage for Wednesday’s Nvidia earnings print — and for the even bigger $78 billion sales outlook that followed.
Looking ahead, Nvidia earnings will likely hinge on how quickly customers can absorb new Blackwell-based systems, whether supply constraints ease, and how the company navigates export rules and rising competition while keeping margins near the mid-70% range.
