Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Nvidia gave a strong growth forecast on Wednesday as Big Tech’s AI investment spree propelled the world’s most valuable company past $200bn in annual revenue for the first time.
The semiconductor behemoth said it expects revenue of $78bn for the current quarter, well above consensus analyst estimates of $72.1bn compiled by Visible Alpha, as tech giants continue to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into AI chips and data centres.
Nvidia reported revenue of $68.1bn for the final quarter of its financial year, which ends in late January, up 73 per cent from a year ago and ahead of Wall Street expectations of $66.2bn and its prior guidance of roughly $65bn.
Data centre revenue — which refers to Nvidia’s AI chip technology, including its current generation Blackwell hardware launched last year — was $62.3bn, better than estimates of $60.5bn.
“Computing demand is growing exponentially . . . Our customers are racing to invest in AI compute,” chief executive Jensen Huang said.
Nvidia’s total annual revenue for its fiscal year 2026 was $215.9bn, while its net income was $120bn. Net income in the final quarter was $43bn, beating expectations of $36.4bn.
It also met analyst expectations for its gross margins, at 75 per cent, which the company said it expects to be sustained through the current April quarter.
Nvidia shares rose more than 2 per cent in after-hours trading immediately after the announcement.
Its earnings — considered a bellwether for the AI boom because of its chips’ crucial role in running the technology — came after weeks of stock market volatility triggered by anxieties over how AI could upend traditional industries as well as concerns about Big Tech’s astronomical spending spree on AI data centres.
Markets steadied ahead of Nvidia’s announcement on Wednesday, with the tech-heavy Nasdaq up 1.3 per cent, while Nvidia shares closed 1.4 per cent higher.
Nvidia did not include any potential AI chip revenue from China in its outlook.
A deal with the White House in December gave the go-ahead to sales of Nvidia’s H200 AI chip to China, opening up a market potentially worth tens of billions of dollars. But the FT reported in January that US security reviews had delayed the issuing of licences to Nvidia’s China customers.