Ai surge helps Nvidia beat Q4 forecasts and set a stronger-than-expected Q1 outlook
Nvidia beat Wall Street in the fiscal fourth quarter and offered a first-quarter revenue guide that topped expectations, as executives said ai-driven demand pushed data center sales to new highs.
Ai drives data center gains
Nvidia reported $68. 1 billion in revenue for the quarter ended January 25, 2026, with non-GAAP earnings per share of $1. 62, and said Data Center revenue alone reached $62. 3 billion. CFO Colette Kress said hyperscaler revenue increased and remained the largest customer category at slightly over 50% of Data Center revenue, while growth was led by the rest of the Data Center customers as revenue diversified.
Record revenue, margins and earnings for fiscal 2026
fiscal 2026 revenue was $215. 9 billion, up 65% from a year earlier, and that quarterly GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins were 75. 0% and 75. 2%, respectively. For the quarter, GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $1. 76 and $1. 62; for fiscal 2026, GAAP and non-GAAP EPS were $4. 90 and $4. 77. Compute revenue grew 58% year over year, and networking revenue rose 263% to $11 billion.
Market reaction and investor context
Nvidia said it beat analysts’ expectations on both the top and bottom lines after the bell on Wednesday, and offered Q1 guidance between $76. 44 billion and $79. 56 billion, above Wall Street’s estimate of $72. 8 billion. The company noted that the guidance does not include any potential revenue out of China. Nvidia stock pared earlier gains in premarket trading, ending a session up about 1% after an earlier 3% jump, and was up just over 5% since the start of the year as of Wednesday afternoon; comparative moves cited were Advanced Micro Devices down roughly 1%, Broadcom off 3%, and Intel up almost 27% year to date.
Business mix, products and customer deals
Outside of Data Center, Nvidia reported gaming revenue of $3. 7 billion versus estimates of $4 billion. The quarter followed the January launch of Nvidia’s Vera Rubin AI superchip at CES and an expanded multiyear agreement with Meta to supply Blackwell and Rubin processors plus a major standalone deployment of Grace CPU servers. Jensen Huang said the "agentic AI inflection point has arrived" and highlighted products such as Grace Blackwell with NVLink and Vera Rubin as central to the company’s compute leadership.
Shareholder returns, tax and accounting changes
During fiscal 2026, Nvidia returned $41. 1 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends, and had $58. 5 billion remaining under its share repurchase authorization at the end of the quarter. The company will pay a quarterly cash dividend of $0. 01 per share on April 1, 2026, to shareholders of record on March 11, 2026. Beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Nvidia will include stock-based compensation expense in non-GAAP financial measures, and for the full year fiscal 2027 the GAAP and non-GAAP tax rates are expected to be between 17. 0% and 19. 0%, excluding discrete items and material tax changes.
Analyst and industry backdrop
Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster wrote that the debate for investors is how far the AI buildout has progressed and what growth will look like in 2027 and 2028, adding that hyperscalers including Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft plan to spend a combined $650 billion on AI capital expenditures in 2026. Nvidia breaks down its Data Center business into compute, graphics chips and CPUs, and networking; networking revenue alone reached $11 billion this quarter.
Nvidia said it will host a conference call with analysts and investors today at 2 p. m. Pacific time (5 p. m. Eastern time), and a live webcast of the call will be available on its investor relations website and recorded for replay until the company’s next quarterly call. In the coming weeks Nvidia is scheduled to host its GTC 2026 event in San Jose, California, where it is expected to make several product announcements.
