NVIDIA posts $81.6B quarter

NVIDIA reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $81.6 billion on May 20, extending the surge in AI infrastructure spending that has remade the company’s business. The Santa Clara, California, company said revenue for the quarter ended April 26 rose 85% from a year earlier and 20% from the prior quarter. (investor.nvidia.com) Net income was $58.3 billion and free cash flow was $48.6 billion, according to the company’s earnings release. NVIDIA also authorized an additional $80 billion in share repurchases and raised its quarterly dividend to $0.25 a share from $0.01. The quarter’s numbers show how concentrated NVIDIA’s growth has become around AI systems sold into large data centers. (investor.nvidia.com) They also show management using the earnings report to widen the pitch beyond GPUs, with a new emphasis on CPUs and full-system deployments. CFO Colette Kress told analysts the company had visibility to nearly $20 billion in CPU revenue this year, while trade publication DigiTimes reported NVIDIA had outlined four deployment models for its Vera CPU and was targeting $20 billion in standalone revenue. ### How much of the quarter came from data centers? Data-center revenue was $75.2 billion, or more than 90% of total quarterly revenue, according to NVIDIA’s earnings release. (investor.nvidia.com) The company said that figure rose 92% from a year earlier. CNBC reported the segment nearly doubled from the same period a year ago, underscoring how heavily NVIDIA remains tied to spending by cloud providers and AI model developers. The April 26 quarter leaves NVIDIA with only a small share of revenue coming from its other businesses relative to data center. The company’s investor materials described the quarter as record revenue and record data-center revenue, reinforcing that the AI build-out remains the central driver of results. (investor.nvidia.com) ### Why did the buyback stand out? NVIDIA said it approved an additional $80 billion for share repurchases alongside the earnings report. The company also raised its quarterly cash dividend to $0.25 a share from $0.01, according to the investor release. The scale of the repurchase authorization stood out because it came in the same quarter that NVIDIA generated $48.6 billion in free cash flow. (investor.nvidia.com) Al Jazeera, citing the earnings report, also highlighted the $80 billion buyback plan as part of the company’s capital-return package. ### Why is NVIDIA talking about CPUs now? (investor.nvidia.com) Colette Kress said on the earnings call that NVIDIA had visibility to nearly $20 billion in total CPU revenue this year, “setting us up to become the world’s leading CPU supplier,” according to The Register’s report on the call. CNBC separately reported that NVIDIA is aiming to become the world’s leading CPU supplier, a market long dominated by Intel and AMD. (investor.nvidia.com) DigiTimes reported that NVIDIA had laid out four ways to sell Vera CPUs, including as part of broader systems, and expected the chip to generate $20 billion in standalone revenue. That framing places CPUs alongside accelerators in NVIDIA’s effort to sell more of the server stack, rather than only the AI chip inside it. (investor.nvidia.com) ### What did management say about demand? Jensen Huang said on the earnings call that “Agentic AI has arrived,” according to CNBC’s live report. CNBC also reported Huang said demand had gone “parabolic” as NVIDIA’s platform was used across frontier AI models. (theregister.com) Those comments came after NVIDIA’s official release described the quarter as record-setting across revenue and data center. The company’s investor page lists the first-quarter fiscal 2027 webcast, transcript and related materials alongside the earnings release. ### What comes next after a quarter this large? NVIDIA’s investor site says the company has posted the first-quarter fiscal 2027 webcast and financial materials, which are now the main reference points for analysts parsing the results. (digitimes.com) The next formal milestone will be NVIDIA’s fiscal second-quarter report, while investors will also track whether the company’s CPU push begins to show up more clearly in segment commentary and product shipments. (cnbc.com) (investor.nvidia.com)