Nvidia Posts $43 Billion Quarterly Profit on Record $68 Billion Revenue as AI Chip Dominance Deepens
Nvidia's fiscal fourth quarter delivered its most profitable period ever, surpassing the quarterly earnings of Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet, with data center revenue surging 75% year-over-year to $62.3 billion.
Nvidia reported on Wednesday that its quarterly profit reached $43 billion for the three months ending January 2026, nearly doubling from the same period a year earlier and marking the first time the chipmaker's quarterly earnings exceeded those of Apple, Microsoft, and Alphabet individually. Total revenue came in at $68.1 billion, beating Wall Street's consensus expectation of $66.2 billion and reflecting a 73% year-over-year increase driven overwhelmingly by AI infrastructure spending.
The company's data center segment generated $62.3 billion in revenue for the quarter, up 75% from a year ago and 22% sequentially. Blackwell-architecture chips, released last year, accounted for two-thirds of data center revenue in the period, confirming the rapid adoption of Nvidia's newest AI hardware.
CEO Jensen Huang noted that Blackwell chips are already driving meaningful efficiency gains for customers — Facebook's parent Meta, for instance, reported a 3.5% increase in advertising clicks per session attributed to its Nvidia-powered AI applications. Hyperscaler clients accounted for just over 50% of data center revenue, with the remainder coming from a broadening enterprise and sovereign AI base.
For full fiscal year 2026, Nvidia reported revenue of approximately $215.9 billion, up 65% from prior year, and net income of roughly $117 billion at a 71.3% net margin. The company guided for first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $78 billion, plus or minus 2%, far ahead of analysts' consensus of $72.6 billion.
The guidance explicitly excludes any revenue from data center chip sales to China, where U.S. export restrictions remain in place following limitations that cost Nvidia more than $5 billion in foregone revenue last year.
Despite the strong results, Nvidia shares declined roughly 5.5% the following day as investors expressed concern that year-over-year comparisons are becoming more difficult and scrutinized the absence of a meaningful increase in capital returns. The initial after-hours bump of 4% faded as analysts noted the market had priced in an exceptionally high bar for performance.
Jensen Huang separately indicated the company plans to reveal further details about its next-generation CPU strategy at its annual developer conference in Silicon Valley next month.
Read the original reporting at The New York Times.
