NVIDIA posts 85% revenue growth

Nvidia reported fiscal first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion on May 20, 2026, up 85% from a year earlier, extending a run of AI-driven growth that investors had been watching for signs of slowing. The company said data center revenue rose 92% to $75.2 billion in the quarter ended April 26, while its board approved an additional $80 billion in share repurchases and raised the quarterly dividend to 25 cents a share. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, said in the earnings release that the buildout of “AI factories” was accelerating. The results gave markets a fresh set of hard numbers on demand for AI chips, servers and the networking gear that ties those systems together. ### Why did this report matter beyond the headline revenue number? Nvidia’s May 20 release showed growth was not confined to a single line item. Data center compute revenue reached $60.4 billion, up 77% from a year earlier, while data center networking revenue hit a record $14.8 billion, up 199% year over year and 35% from the prior quarter. That split matters because Nvidia has been recasting itself not only as a seller of AI processors, but as a supplier of broader infrastructure inside large data centers. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) Jensen Huang said Nvidia is “uniquely positioned” across clouds, frontier models and edge AI, while the company said it is moving to a new reporting structure with two market platforms: Data Center and Edge Computing. Within Data Center, Nvidia said it will separately report Hyperscale and ACIE, which stands for AI Clouds, Industrial and Enterprise. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) ### How big is the networking business inside Nvidia now? Nvidia’s own figures put quarterly networking revenue at $14.8 billion. Annualized, that implies a run rate of roughly $60 billion, a scale that has drawn attention because networking had long been treated as a supporting business next to GPUs rather than a central revenue engine. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) The company did not frame networking as a separate standalone division in its earnings release, but the reported growth rate shows how much AI data-center spending is flowing into switches, interconnects and related systems. That is one reason investors and suppliers have been watching spillovers from Nvidia’s results into memory makers and network-equipment names. Seoul Economic Daily reported that Nvidia’s quarter helped steady sentiment around Korean chip stocks including Samsung Electronics and SK hynix. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) ### What did Nvidia do with cash returns? Nvidia said it returned about $20 billion to shareholders during the quarter through repurchases and cash dividends. The board approved an additional $80 billion for repurchases on May 18, without expiration, and the company said $38.5 billion remained under the prior authorization at the end of the quarter. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) The company also raised its quarterly cash dividend to $0.25 a share from $0.01. Nvidia said the dividend will be paid on June 26, 2026, to shareholders of record on June 4, 2026. ### Where does China still constrain the story? Jensen Huang told CNBC that Nvidia has “largely conceded” China’s AI chip market to Huawei as U.S. export restrictions continue to limit what the company can sell there. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) He said Nvidia still wants to return to the market, but told investors to “expect nothing” on approvals for advanced-chip sales into China. CNBC also reported on May 23 that Huang said Nvidia’s forecast for a $200 billion CPU market includes China, underscoring that the company still sees long-term demand there even as current restrictions remain in place. The contrast leaves investors weighing strong global AI spending against a market that once accounted for at least one-fifth of Nvidia’s data center revenue, according to CNBC. (cnbc.com) ### What comes next in the company’s calendar? June 4, 2026 is Nvidia’s dividend record date, and June 26 is the payment date for the new quarterly dividend, the company said. Nvidia posted the fiscal first-quarter results for the period ended April 26, 2026, on its investor relations site and said the May 20 conference call materials are available there. (nvidianews.nvidia.com) (cnbc.com)