Nvidia posts record quarterly revenue of $81.6 billion on AI demand; stock slips post earnings announcement

NVIDIA reported record revenue of $81.6 billion for the first quarter of fiscal 2027, up 85% from a year ago, driven by continued demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure and data centre computing.

The company’s data centre business, which has become Nvidia’s largest revenue driver amid the global AI boom, posted revenue of record $60.4 billion, up 77% from a year ago and up 18% sequentially. Data centre networking revenue was a record $14.8 billion, up 199% from a year ago and up 35% sequentially.

Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.87, ahead of analyst estimates, while the company forecast second-quarter revenue of $91 billion, plus or minus 2%, exceeding Wall Street expectations.

Founder and chief executive Jensen Huang said demand for AI computing infrastructure remained strong as companies increasingly build what he described as “AI factories” to power generative and agentic AI applications. “Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries. NVIDIA is uniquely positioned at the centre of this transformation as the only platform that runs in every cloud, powers every frontier and open-source model, and scales everywhere AI is produced, from hyperscale data centres to the edge,” said Huang.

The results reinforce Nvidia’s dominance in the AI chip market, where its graphics processing units remain central to training and deploying advanced AI models. Major technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon, Alphabet and Meta continue to ramp up spending on AI infrastructure. Reuters reported that hyperscalers and large technology firms are expected to collectively spend more than $700 billion on AI infrastructure this year.

Nvidia announces share buyback plan

During the first quarter of fiscal 2027, the company said that it returned a record level of approximately $20 billion to shareholders in the form of shares repurchased and cash dividends. As of the end of the first quarter, the company had $38.5 billion remaining under its share repurchase authorisation. Nvidia also announced an additional $80 billion share repurchase authorisation and raised its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share.

Nvidia stock slips post announcement

Despite announcing record performance in the quarter, the shares of Nvidia slipped by 2% in the after hours of trading, as investors remain focused on rising competition in the AI hardware market. Rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices are expanding their AI chip offerings, while major cloud companies including Amazon and Google are also developing in-house AI chips.

China also remains a challenge for Nvidia after US export restrictions limited shipments of advanced AI chips to the region. Nvidia noted that it assumed no China-related data centre compute revenue in its second-quarter outlook.

Still, the latest earnings underline how sharply Nvidia’s business has expanded during the AI spending boom. The company had reported revenue of $44.1 billion in the same quarter last year.