Nvidia forecast points to accelerating growth, Vera Rubin hits market
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia Corp., speaks at the 2026 CES event on Tuesday, January 6, 2026 in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States. Siemens and Nvidia announced the expansion of their strategic partnership to develop industrial and physical AI solutions to bring AI-driven innovation to the industrial workflow. Photographer: Bridget Bennett/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Nvidia It reported revenue growth of over 55% for the 11th consecutive quarter as leading tech names continued to purchase the company’s AI chips. Already the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, growth is now accelerating again.
Nvidia said in its earnings report on Wednesday that annual revenue will rise about 77% this quarter to about $78 billion. This marks the fastest growth rate for any period since the quarter ending January 2025, when expansion was slightly higher at 78%. Its estimate beat the average analyst estimate of $72.6 billion, according to LSEG.
Revenue rose 73% in the fourth quarter, again beating estimates, following growth of 62% in the prior period. Nvidia’s data center business, which houses its AI graphics processing units, now accounts for more than 91% of sales.
The chipmaker’s optimistic outlook comes as the company ramps up production of Vera Rubin, its next rack-scale AI system to replace Grace Blackwell. Nvidia says the system’s 72 next-generation Rubin graphics processing units (GPUs) are expected to deliver 10 times more performance per watt compared to their predecessors.
Finance chief Colette Kress said in the earnings call following the report that the company “shipped the first Vera Rubin samples to customers earlier this week” and that Nvidia expects every model maker and cloud provider to eventually deploy the system. He said the company expects growth this year to exceed the figure included in a $500 billion revenue opportunity between Blackwell and Rubin in the company’s projection last year.
“We believe we have inventory and supply commitments in place to meet future demand, including shipments extending into calendar 2027,” Kress said. he said.
Nvidia’s shares were little changed in extended trading after an initial rally; This reflects investors’ high expectations for the company, which is valued at almost $5 trillion thanks to its dominance in AI processors.
Competition is on the horizon as a smaller rival Advanced Micro Devices It will launch Helios, its first rack-scale system for AI, later this year. Earlier this week, Meta committed to deploying up to 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs, with Helios shipments starting in 2026.
Nvidia also faces challenges from some of its largest customers: Amazon And Google — they produce in-house AI chips to power data centers. in it annual filingNvidia said the potential risk to future results is “customers developing their own internal solutions.”
Looking beyond fiscal 2027, growth is expected to slow dramatically, from 63% this year to 30%, 11.5% and 3% in the next three years, according to LSEG.
‘Compute equals revenue’
But for now, Nvidia’s growth is far faster than its rivals or peers as tech giants and AI model developers race to build out their infrastructure to meet growing demand.
“In this new world of AI, computing equals revenues,” CEO Jensen Huang said on Wednesday’s earnings call. He repeated that phrase and variations of it several times during the call, citing the rapid adoption of agency AI, which moves beyond early generative AI by allowing businesses to build and run apps with text prompts.
Anthropic’s Claude Cowork quickly took action by connecting to more applications institutionally. And earlier this month, OpenAI hired OpenClaw developer Peter Steinberger after the tool grew in popularity by automating tasks like managing emails and calendars, browsing the web, and interacting with online services.
“Between Claude Cowork and OpenClaw, computing demand is rapidly increasing, and the ChatGPT moment of agent AI has arrived,” Huang said in the meeting.
Nvidia’s first-quarter forecast doesn’t include any potential data center revenue from China. A lack of clarity on export controls has prevented Nvidia from selling to the world’s second-largest economy, even after President Donald Trump said in January that his administration would approve sales of Nvidia’s H200 chip to China and that the U.S. government would pick up 25% of sales.
Huang said in May that China’s artificial intelligence market will likely reach around $50 billion in two to three years, and missing out on that would be a “tremendous loss.” This is an opportunity that has not yet been opened.
“While small quantities of H200 products have been approved by the US government for China-based customers, we have not yet received any revenue and do not know if any imports into China will be permitted,” Kress said in the call. he said. “In our view, we don’t assume it will generate any data center computing revenue from China.”
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