NVIDIA Q1 Revenue Surges Over 85%

On May 20, 2026, Eastern Time, NVIDIA released its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 (the quarter ended April 26, 2026, calendar year) after the market close. First-quarter revenue reached $81.6 billion, up 85% year-on-year, further accelerating from the 73% growth rate in the previous quarter. Net income for the quarter stood at $58.3 billion, more than tripling compared to the same period last year.

Breaking it down by business segments, the data center business remains the core engine of growth, generating $75.2 billion in revenue this quarter—a 92% year-on-year increase. This growth rate far outpaces the roughly 75% average growth in 2026 capital expenditures recently reported by leading global cloud service providers.

Notably, to align with the penetration of AI chips into a broader ecosystem, NVIDIA simultaneously adjusted its disclosure structure in this earnings report. Total revenue is now reclassified into two major segments: Data Center (enabling hyperscalers, AI clouds, enterprise customers, etc.) and Edge Computing (covering PCs, automotive, robotics, AI wireless access network base stations, etc.). In the first quarter, the Edge Computing segment brought in $64 billion in revenue, up 29% year-on-year, showing equally strong performance.

On the product front, NVIDIA CFO Colette Kress explicitly stated that all major hyperscalers, cloud service providers, and AI model developers are now utilizing and deploying NVIDIA’s Blackwell platform. As the Blackwell chip technology matures further and ramps up rapidly, NVIDIA’s GAAP gross margin for the quarter remained as high as 74.9%—despite advanced packaging and High Bandwidth Memory (HBM) costs remaining elevated. This demonstrates its immense pricing power and supply-chain control over the Blackwell product line.

As the successor to Blackwell, the next-generation rack-scale AI system, Vera Rubin, became a massive highlight of this earnings call. Jensen Huang reaffirmed during the conference call that Vera Rubin will begin formal production and customer shipments in the second half of 2026, achieving full mass production in the first half of 2027. The Vera CPU, launched alongside the Rubin architecture, serves as NVIDIA's vital weapon for expanding into non-GPU markets. The CFO pointed out that the Vera CPU enables the company to tap into a $200 billion addressable market for traditional CPUs. Riding this momentum, NVIDIA expects its total CPU revenue to reach $20 billion in 2026.

In terms of shareholder returns, NVIDIA announced two shareholder-friendly initiatives: an $80 billion stock buyback program, and an increase in its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 to $0.25 per share. CFO Colette Kress stated that the company plans to return 50% of its free cash flow to shareholders this year.

The financial guidance was even more astonishing. NVIDIA expects second-quarter revenue to reach $91 billion, representing a year-on-year growth rate of up to 95%. This continuous acceleration from previous quarters signals that the company's growth momentum will be further sustained.

Furthermore, Colette Kress stated during the conference call that current market demand is unleashing at an accelerated pace. Consequently, the company has revised its forecast for total global AI industry spending by the end of this decade (2021–2030) upward to between $3 trillion and $4 trillion, outlining a vast and promising horizon for the industry's development.