10 Wall Street analysts react to Nvidia’s blockbuster earnings

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on Wednesday aimed to reassure investors that the AI chip giant can keep up its blockbuster growth, pointing to a broad base of customers and new products he said would help it surpass the $1 trillion in sales forecast for its flagship AI chips.

The company reported first-quarter revenue of $81.62 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of $78.86 billion. Data center revenue came in at $75.2 billion against an expected $72.8 billion, and adjusted earnings per share of $1.87 topped estimates of $1.76.

For the second quarter, Nvidia guided for revenue of $91 billion, plus or minus 2%, well above Wall Street’s $86.84 billion estimate.

The company also announced an $80 billion share repurchase program and raised its quarterly cash dividend to 25 cents per share from 1 cent.

Despite the strong numbers, shares were relatively muted in premarket trading Thursday, a sign that investors see tougher competition ahead even as Nvidia’s near-term outlook remains robust.

Many of Nvidia’s biggest customers are pouring funds into developing their own custom chips, posing a long-term risk to the company’s dominance.

Huang told analysts he expects Nvidia to grow faster than its large hyperscale customers, pointing to a fast-growing new sub-segment of data center clients that includes AI-specific cloud firms, whose sales roughly matched hyperscalers in the quarter but grew more quickly.

During the earnings call, Huang said Nvidia’s new “Vera” central processors open up a $200 billion addressable market. The company expects $20 billion in Vera chip revenue by the end of the fiscal year. The figure sits entirely outside the previously stated $1 trillion forecast for Blackwell and Rubin AI chips between 2025 and 2027.

“I expect (Vera) to be the second largest” sales contributor beyond the $1 trillion in Blackwell and Rubin chips, Huang said. “All of our customers are quite excited about Vera.” He cautioned, however, that “my sense is that we’ll be supply-constrained through the entire life of Vera Rubin,” the combined chip platform set to launch later this year.

Nvidia also disclosed $30 billion in cloud computing agreements, up from $27 billion the prior quarter, which it said support its research and development.

What analysts are saying about Nvidia earnings

Goldman Sachs: “We see a clearer path for the stock to outperform the market over the coming months, driven by two key factors. First, we expect upside to hyperscaler CapEx forecasts, which we believe are increasingly sustainable as Nvidia is driving over 70% annual token cost reductions as token prices stabilize or increase. Second, we believe Nvidia’s improved capital allocation should drive increased investor confidence around the company’s commitment to balance product innovation and ecosystem investments with shareholder returns.”

Morgan Stanley: “Vera Rubin is on schedule and should deliver leadership economics and stop people from comparing 2027 ASICs to 2025 Blackwell. With the sudden surge of interest in CPUs, the company’s claim of revenue share leadership is quite interesting. The relative valuation gap is just too wide to ignore, and to us the company’s position as the most important AI chip supplier remains unassailable.”

BofA: “We flag NVDA’s unparalleled diversity of growth engines, across hyperscale and AI cloud/enterprise. While the mix is ~50/50 today, we view the latter to grow faster as AI broadens out, and NVDA has a near-monopoly here via AI factories and full-platform support – areas which custom ASICs cannot address.”

Bernstein: “The quarter was strong and on the surface was actually fairly quiet (for NVIDIA at least), with the typically powerful results that investors have grown to expect, as well as the capital return (both buyback and dividend) that we believe some shareholders have been waiting for. And yet there was also plenty to keep things moving here. Demand clearly remains off the charts for Blackwell, with Rubin on track to launch in Q3 and with continued confidence in the $1T Blackwell/Rubin trajectory into CY27.”

Raymond James: “Vera is adding a dimension to growth with the CPU market. NVIDIA expects to generate nearly $20B of CPU sales this year and predicted a $200B 2030 TAM; just two weeks ago, AMD predicted this TAM would be $120B.”

Citi: “NVDA is adding more visibility to its Data Center sales by providing two sub-groups: Hyperscale and ACIE (AI Clouds, Industrial, & Enterprise) which we view as a positive for comparison purposes.”

Wolfe Research: “We aren’t surprised that the stock didn’t act better in response to the report, since what’s important isn’t JulQ but CY27. And we feel the fact that other AI compute companies provided firmer visibility into next year is what has driven their outperformance.”

Stifel: “NVDA cleared on every line… Target price to $282 with introduction of FY29 estimates; our directional bias is to the upside but at a measured pace given timing of Vera Rubin ramps.”

Macquarie: “Nvidia sees $20bn CPU orders in 2026, with Agentic AI driving $200bn CPU TAM. Demand is very high for GPU. Both A100 and H100 rental prices were up.”

Evercore ISI: “Dividend increased to $0.25/shr from $0.01 (now $6bn/qtr return vs $250m) and new repurchase authorization of $80bn (on top of $39bn existing) indicates possibly higher capital returns in CY2026 than the $120bn we previewed.”