Record Revenue for AI Leader NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) - What's Next for the Sector?

NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) reported record revenue for the first quarter ended April 26, 2026, of $81.6 billion, up 20% from the previous quarter and up 85% from a year ago.

The stock was down after the market close following earnings, trading down over 2%.

NVIDIA has beaten Wall Street estimates so consistently that a standard "beat" is now fully priced into the stock. Investors were looking for truly exceptional guidance, and anything short of that triggered profit-taking.

For the quarter, GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins were 74.9% and 75.0%, respectively.

For the quarter, GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $2.39 and $1.87, respectively.

"The buildout of AI factories - the largest infrastructure expansion in human history - is accelerating at extraordinary speed," said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. "Agentic AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling rapidly across companies and industries. NVIDIA is uniquely positioned at the center of this transformation as the only platform that runs in every cloud, powers every frontier and open source model, and scales everywhere AI is produced - from hyperscale data centers to the edge."

During the first quarter of fiscal 2027, NVIDIA returned a record level of approximately $20.0 billion to shareholders in the form of shares repurchased and cash dividends. As of the end of the first quarter, the company had $38.5 billion remaining under its share repurchase authorization. On May 18, 2026, the Board of Directors approved an additional $80.0 billion to the Company's share repurchase authorization, without expiration. NVIDIA is increasing its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share of common stock, which will be paid on June 26, 2026, to all shareholders of record on June 4, 2026.

NVIDIA is transitioning to a new reporting framework that better reflects its current and future growth drivers. NVIDIA will have two market platforms - Data Center and Edge Computing. Within Data Center, NVIDIA will report two sub-markets, Hyperscale and ACIE, which incorporates AI Clouds, Industrial and Enterprise. Hyperscale will include revenue from the public clouds and the world's largest consumer internet companies, while ACIE addresses NVIDIA's growth opportunity in diverse AI purpose-built data centers and AI factories across industries and countries. Edge Computing highlights data processing devices for agentic and physical AI including PCs, game consoles, workstations, AI-RAN base stations, robotics and automotive.

Under the previous sub-markets, Data Center compute revenue was a record $60.4 billion, up 77% from a year ago and up 18% sequentially. Data Center networking revenue was a record $14.8 billion, up 199% from a year ago and up 35% sequentially.

Record revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from a year ago

Record Data Center revenue of $75.2 billion, up 92% from a year ago

NVIDIA announces $80.0 billion additional share repurchase authorization and increases its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share

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