Nvidia posted second quarter revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106 percent from a year earlier and well ahead of analyst expectations of $92.2 billion, according to Fortune. Non GAAP earnings came in at $2.22 a share, above the roughly $2.06 to $2.09 range Wall Street had penciled in, and the stock rallied more than 4 percent in after hours trading once the numbers landed.
The bigger surprise was what came next. CEO Jensen Huang broke from Nvidia's usual practice of guiding only one quarter out and projected 70 percent revenue growth for fiscal 2028, implying revenue somewhere around $690 billion to $700 billion, more than $100 billion above the roughly $570 billion consensus forecast. Huang called it the company's first ever year ahead forecast and said Nvidia has a huge year coming up. Chief financial officer Colette Kress guided third quarter revenue to $108 billion and said the aggressive outlook reflects customer forecasts that are running at roughly double Nvidia's own growth trajectory.
Demand for Nvidia's AI chips is currently growing at around 100 percent, and Huang noted that non hyperscaler customers, including sovereign AI programs, startups, and enterprises, now make up roughly half of the business, a shift from a market once dominated almost entirely by the largest cloud providers. He also pointed to AI agents as a fast growing source of compute demand, saying agents consume anywhere from 15 to 100 times more compute than a human user, and that Nvidia's own internal agent count could grow from 40,000 today into the millions.
Even with demand running hot, Huang acknowledged the company is supply constrained, saying that although actual demand is running well above 70 percent, Nvidia's supply only allows it to confidently commit to delivering that 70 percent growth figure. Kress also addressed investor unease over Nvidia's own investments in AI labs and infrastructure, which include roughly $50 billion in frontier AI investments plus $500 billion raised alongside partners, sometimes described as circular financing. She pushed back on that framing, calling the investments low risk, high reward bets that help drive demand across the broader ecosystem rather than artificially propping it up.
Margins are feeling some of the same cost pressure hitting the rest of the memory chip market. Third quarter gross margin guidance came in at 74 percent, down from 75 percent in the second quarter, and Kress said margins are likely to bottom out around 71 to 72 percent in the fourth quarter before stabilizing near 72 to 73 percent next fiscal year as planned price increases take effect.