Nvidia just posted the kind of quarter that makes Wall Street forget every worry it had about an AI bubble. The chipmaker reported fiscal second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion, up 106% from a year earlier, blasting past the roughly $92 billion Wall Street expected and reaffirming its place as the linchpin of the entire artificial-intelligence trade.

Data-center sales — the chips powering AI models at Microsoft, Meta, Google and every cloud giant racing to keep up — hit $89 billion, up 117% year over year and well ahead of analyst estimates near $86 billion, according to CNBC's live earnings coverage. Non-GAAP earnings came in at $2.22 a share, more than double the $1.05 Nvidia posted a year earlier, while gross margin held steady at a rich 75%.

Then came the number that really moved the stock: Nvidia told investors to expect roughly $108 billion in sales this quarter, plus or minus 2%, topping the roughly $104 billion consensus estimate. CEO Jensen Huang went further, forecasting 70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028 — nearly double the 44% growth analysts had modeled.

"Compute Is Revenue"

"AI has reached its inflection point," Huang said on the earnings call, according to Fortune. "It's doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue."

"We have supply for 70% growth," Huang told analysts. "Our demand is much higher than that."

Shares wobbled briefly the moment the numbers dropped Wednesday afternoon, dipping as much as 1.3% in after-hours trading, before reversing hard once Huang and finance chief Colette Kress leaned into that growth outlook on the call. Nvidia stock was last changing hands up roughly 4%, near $218.77, a swing that Kiplinger's live markets desk tied directly to Kress's commentary, and one that also lifted Nasdaq futures and rival chipmakers heading into Thursday's session.

The stakes were higher than a typical earnings print. As the world's most valuable public company, Nvidia has effectively become Wall Street's proxy for whether the broader AI spending boom is real or a bubble waiting to pop — a question that has hung over tech stocks all month. A soft quarter or a cautious outlook risked dragging down the Nasdaq and every chipmaker in its orbit; instead, the beat-and-raise report gave investors fresh cover to keep buying into the trade.

Nvidia also disclosed that customer supply commitments more than doubled to $279 billion from $119 billion the prior quarter — a backlog Huang has repeatedly pointed to as evidence that AI infrastructure spending has years left to run, not months. Notably, the new guidance assumes zero data-center chip sales to China, underscoring how thoroughly Washington's export restrictions have walled the company out of what was once a multibillion-dollar market. Even so, Nvidia found room to hand $26 billion back to shareholders through buybacks and dividends during the quarter and declared a fresh 25-cent-per-share payout, drawing on the $80 billion buyback authorization it disclosed back in May.