Nvidia’s revenue blows past Wall Street expectations as AI boom accelerates | Technology

Nvidia’s revenue blows past Wall Street expectations as AI boom accelerates | Technology

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/may/20/nvidia-revenue-ai-boom

Publish Date: 2026-05-20 17:50:00

Source Domain: www.theguardian.com

Nvidia continued its years-long streak of beating Wall Street’s expectations for growth on Wednesday, reassuring most investors that the AI boom, particularly the global explosion of data centers, will continue apace.

“The buildout of AI factories – the largest infrastructure expansion in human history – is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” said Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, in a statement. “Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries.”

Many analysts view Nvidia’s financial performance as a broader referendum on the AI buildout. The most valuable company in the world with a $5.4tn market cap, Nvidia reigns supreme in the semiconductor chip market and has cashed in on big tech’s AI aspirations by providing key components, software and infrastructure to fuel that expansion. US tech giants are collectively planning to spend some $750bn this year on AI infrastructure, a significant portion of which will go towards chips for data centers.

A major portion of Nvidia’s revenue comes from its datacenter business. On Wednesday, the chip maker reported 92% year-over-year growth of this vertical to a record $75.2bn. The company is facing some competition in producing chips from other tech giants, though, like Amazon and Google.

Still, Nvidia blew past analysts’ expectations of $78.86bn in revenue for the first quarter of 2026, securing $81.62bn for the quarter. The chipmaker also exceeded Wall Street expectations of $1.76 per share and reported earnings of $1.87 per share.

Huang joined Elon Musk and Donald Trump on Air Force One for a trip to China last week. Huang has expressed some hope that Nvidia will be able to expand into China, although it was unclear whether Chinese officials will agree to use American technology. In December, the Trump administration allowed Nvidia to export H200 AI chips to China and collect a 25% fee on these sales. “The Chinese government has to…

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