Nvidia Stock Jumps 7.6% Today After Blowout Earnings Beat and a Bullish $108 Billion Sales Outlook Ahead

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Nvidia shares climbed sharply Thursday, rising as much as 7.59% to $225.56, after the chipmaker reported record quarterly revenue that topped Wall Street expectations and issued a stronger-than-anticipated sales forecast for the current quarter, easing investor concerns about the durability of the artificial intelligence spending boom.

The stock gained $15.90 in Thursday’s trading, extending gains that began after the company released its fiscal second-quarter results Wednesday evening. Nvidia’s report served as a keystone moment for a broader wave of strong technology earnings this week, lifting shares of other software and chip companies alongside its own.

Record revenue tops estimates

Nvidia reported revenue of $96.2 billion for the second quarter, ended July 26, 2026, up 18% from the previous quarter and up 106% from a year earlier, according to the company’s official earnings release. The figure comfortably exceeded analyst consensus forecasts of roughly $92.27 billion.

Data center revenue, the company’s largest and most closely watched business segment, reached a record $89 billion, up 117% from a year ago, topping analyst estimates of $85.4 billion. Nvidia attributed the growth to the ramp-up of its Blackwell Ultra infrastructure, with hyperscale revenue more than doubling year over year and increasing 13% sequentially.

Adjusted earnings per share came in at $2.22, ahead of the $2.09 analysts had expected and up 111.4% from $1.05 a year earlier. GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins both reached 75.0%, up from 72.7% in the same quarter last year, a notably strong figure for a hardware company even as rising costs for components like memory chips and wafers continue to pressure margins industrywide.

A bullish forecast drives the rally

Perhaps more significant to investors than the quarterly beat itself was Nvidia’s forward guidance. The company said it expects revenue of $108 billion for the current quarter, plus or minus 2%, well above the $103.9 billion analysts had projected. That outlook does not include any data center sales from China, according to the company.

Nvidia founder and Chief Executive Jensen Huang framed the results as evidence that the broader AI industry has moved from speculative investment to tangible returns. “AI has reached its inflection point. It’s doing useful work,” Huang said in the company’s official earnings release.

Hyperscaler spending shows no signs of slowing

A key theme underpinning Nvidia’s results was continued heavy spending from the handful of massive technology companies, known as hyperscalers, that account for an outsized share of the company’s revenue. Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said capital expenditures among the top five hyperscalers are expected to rise to $1.3 trillion next year, up from $800 billion in 2026, according to CNBC.

That continued spending was underscored by a new deal announced alongside the earnings report: Amazon Web Services agreed to purchase 2 million Nvidia graphics processing units and adopt the company’s new Vera CPU, with some units expected to be integrated with Nvidia’s forthcoming Rubin AI chip and others deployed as standalone systems. The agreement offered fresh evidence that major cloud providers continue to invest aggressively in AI infrastructure despite periodic investor concerns that spending might be nearing its peak.

Margins face pressure ahead

Despite the strong results, Nvidia signaled that some cost pressures are beginning to show up in its outlook. The company said it expects gross margin to slip slightly to 74% in the current quarter, down from the 75% reported in the just-completed period, reflecting rising costs for memory and other components across the semiconductor industry.

Returning capital to shareholders

Nvidia also highlighted a substantial return of capital to investors during the quarter. The company returned approximately $26 billion to shareholders through share repurchases and cash dividends, and reported roughly $99 billion remaining under its existing share repurchase authorization as of the end of the quarter. Nvidia said it will pay its next quarterly dividend of 25 cents per share on Oct. 1, 2026, to shareholders of record as of Sept. 10.

A shifting customer base

Huang also pointed to a broadening customer base as a sign of the AI industry’s maturing structure. Where a single company had driven much of the AI infrastructure buildout a year earlier, Huang said the current environment reflects far greater diversity of demand. “This time last year, one lab alone was driving the buildout; today, we have a golden age of new AI labs and startups, multiple frontier labs scaling in parallel,” Huang said, according to the company’s earnings release, pointing to strength across the broader AI ecosystem beyond its largest customers.

Part of a broader market rally

Nvidia’s results helped fuel a broader rally across technology stocks Thursday. Software and cybersecurity companies including Salesforce, CrowdStrike and Okta also posted strong earnings the same evening, with their shares climbing by double digits in premarket trading Thursday, according to Yahoo Finance. Nvidia’s own after-hours gains built momentum into the regular Thursday trading session as investors digested the full scope of the week’s earnings reports.

With Nvidia now guiding toward $108 billion in revenue for the current quarter and continuing to report gross margins near historic highs for a hardware company, attention turns to whether the company’s next report can sustain the pace of growth that has defined its performance throughout the AI boom. Analysts will also be watching closely for any updates on Nvidia’s access to the Chinese market, an area the company’s current guidance continues to exclude entirely, as well as continued signs of hyperscaler capital spending translating directly into chip demand in the quarters ahead.