Nvidia has delivered another strong quarter, beating expectations on both revenue and earnings while offering a bullish outlook for the months ahead with chief executive Jensen Huang claiming demand for its new-generation chips is already outstripping supply.
Markets had been on edge in the run-up to the chip maker’s results. A wave of selling hit US tech stocks in recent days, driven by growing concern that the valuations of artificial intelligence (AI) companies had outpaced fundamentals; as the poster child of the AI boom, Nvidia was at the centre of those fears.
Investors were bracing for any signs of slowing growth, wary that even a slight miss could trigger a broader unwind in AI-linked stocks. But the company’s results delivered a rebuttal.
Nvidia’s revenue for the third fiscal quarter of 2026 came in at $57bn, up 22% from the previous quarter and 62% year-on-year. Adjusted earnings per share rose to $1.30, beating expectations by 4%.
The company’s flagship data centre division, which includes its high-performance AI chips, generated $51.2bn, up 25% quarter-on-quarter and 66% compared to the same period last year.
Looking ahead, Nvidia expects revenue of $65bn for the current quarter, 6.5% ahead of analyst forecasts. Shares closed up on the day of the results, after several days in the red, and rose further in after-hours trading.
Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot, said the results show Nvidia “continues to walk the walk when it comes to the artificial intelligence story”, comfortably beating expectations after a strong few years.
“This is just what the market wanted after a nervous couple of weeks. Nvidia has done well to assuage any fears that it was beginning to slow its growth and, as such, the rest of the market will respond accordingly,” he added. “Given so much hinged on this latest set of results, and given the success of them, investment markets may just see a 'Santa rally' in December after all.”
Nvidia chief Huang said the company is experiencing unprecedented demand.
“Blackwell sales are off the charts and cloud GPUs [graphics processing units] are sold out. Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference – each growing exponentially,” he said.
“We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast – with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.”
Nvidia’s performance is being driven by its high-end AI chips, particularly those based on its new Blackwell microarchitecture. These chips are used by cloud providers and enterprise customers to train and deploy large-scale AI models. The company’s GPUs dominate the AI market thanks to their performance, scalability and software ecosystem.
Alongside its hardware, Nvidia offers networking gear and its CUDA software platform, which makes it easier for developers to build and run AI applications. This full-stack approach has helped the company entrench itself as the default provider of AI infrastructure.
That optimism was echoed by market analysts. Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, said the company is rising to meet massive expectations.
“Nvidia bears the weight of the world, but like Atlas, it’s standing firm under that towering mountain of expectations. Third quarter results delivered the goods and then some, a 4% beat on the top and bottom line came with a side of more good news in the form of a monster $65bn revenue guide for the fourth quarter,” he said.
“While AI valuations are dominating the news feeds, Nvidia is going about its business in style. There are certainly pockets of the AI space where valuations needed to take a breather, but Nvidia is not in that camp. In fact, while shares have performed well this year, the valuation has gotten more attractive as earnings growth has raced ahead.”
Nvidia isn’t without challenges. US export controls on AI chip sales to China are now biting. The company excluded any potential from China from its outlook and said sales of its H20 chip (a version tailored for the Chinese market to comply with US export restrictions) were described as “insignificant".
Meanwhile, key customers are exploring ways to diversify away from a single supplier, though Britzman suggested that rivals still have a long way to go to match Nvidia’s fully integrated stack.
“What’s new is that its market dominance is facing scrutiny. Key customers are exploring viable alternatives, at least on paper, as they seek faster compute and diversification away from a single supplier,” the Hargreaves Lansdown analyst said.
“The real question is how those alternatives stack up. Designs and promises of similar performance are one thing; track record at scale is another, and no one matches Nvidia there. Its breadth remains underrated: a full data centre business spanning chips, software, networking, and more. Even if rivals can offer parts of the stack, Nvidia’s fully integrated solution will be hard to beat.”
Beyond its data centre dominance, Nvidia’s gaming segment posted $4.3bn in revenue, down 1% quarter-on-quarter but up 30% year-on-year. Its smaller professional visualisation and automotive segments also posted healthy double-digit growth.