Nvidia Posts Record $68.1B Quarter but Wall Street Shrugs

Nvidia record earnings Wall Street tepid reaction AI chip GPU

Nvidia just reported one of the most jaw-dropping quarters in tech history — and investors barely flinched. The AI chip giant posted record quarterly revenue of $68.1 billion, up 73% year-over-year and comfortably beating Wall Street's estimate of $66.21 billion. Yet the stock fell as much as 1.5% during the earnings call before settling roughly flat.

The Numbers That Should Have Moved Markets

Nvidia's Q4 fiscal 2026 results are staggering by any measure:

  • Revenue: $68.1 billion (up 73% YoY, up 20% QoQ)
  • Data Center revenue: $62.3 billion (up 75% YoY) — accounting for over 91% of total revenue
  • Net income: $42.96 billion (up 94% YoY)
  • Gross margin: 75%
  • Full-year revenue: $215.9 billion (up 65% YoY)
  • Earnings per share: $1.76 GAAP (up 98% YoY)

The company also issued a Q1 fiscal 2027 forecast of $78 billion — well above analyst expectations — while noting it is not assuming any Data Center compute revenue from China in its outlook.

Jensen Huang Declares the "Agentic AI Inflection Point"

CEO Jensen Huang used the earnings call to declare that a new era has arrived. "Computing demand is growing exponentially — the agentic AI inflection point has arrived," he said. "Grace Blackwell with NVLink is the king of inference today — delivering an order-of-magnitude lower cost per token — and Vera Rubin will extend that leadership even further."

Huang emphasized that enterprise adoption of AI agents is "skyrocketing" and that customers are "racing to invest in AI compute — the factories powering the AI industrial revolution."

The Rubin Platform and Strategic Partnerships

Beyond the financial results, Nvidia unveiled several major announcements:

  • NVIDIA Rubin platform: Six new chips promising up to 10x reduction in inference token cost compared to Blackwell. AWS, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle will be among the first to deploy Vera Rubin-based instances.
  • Meta partnership: A multiyear, multigenerational deal spanning on-premises, cloud, and AI infrastructure, including millions of Blackwell and Rubin GPUs.
  • Anthropic investment: A new investment and technology partnership with the Claude AI maker, scaling on Microsoft Azure powered by Nvidia systems.
  • Blackwell Ultra: Delivers up to 50x better performance and 35x lower cost for agentic AI compared to Hopper.
  • Groq licensing deal: A non-exclusive agreement to accelerate AI inference at global scale.

Why Wall Street Wasn't Impressed

So why did the stock barely move despite beating estimates by nearly $2 billion? The answer lies in expectations. Nvidia's stock has risen so dramatically over the past two years that investors now expect nothing less than perfection. A 73% revenue growth rate that would make any other company's shareholders ecstatic is simply "meeting the bar" for Nvidia.

There are also lingering concerns about the sustainability of AI spending. While Nvidia's customers continue to order GPUs at a furious pace, questions remain about when — or whether — these massive investments will translate into proportional returns for the companies making them.

The Bottom Line

Nvidia's Q4 results confirm that the AI infrastructure buildout is far from over. $68.1 billion in quarterly revenue, a $78 billion forecast, and the Rubin platform reveal all point to sustained demand. But the muted stock reaction tells a different story: Wall Street has already priced in the AI boom, and from here, even record-breaking numbers may not be enough to satisfy investors who've come to expect the extraordinary as routine. The most absurd earnings bar in tech history just got higher.