Nvidia earnings are today. Investors want more than another beat

When the AI economy owns the bull market, all eyes turn to one company — and one earnings call. That’s Nvidia on Wednesday after the bell.

The question isn’t if the company will post another outsized quarter. The Street is already braced for that. The question is whether or not management’s guidance can still stretch confidence across an anxious tape — one where policy shifts have muddied China, supply questions shadow Nvidia’s Blackwell rollout, and a $4 trillion valuation leaves no room for a wobble.

After months of volatility tugging at mega-cap valuations, Nvidia’s quarterly earnings release will be a gut check on whether AI-driven demand, geopolitical complexity, and silicon supply still justify tech’s lofty multiples. Lose confidence here? Markets may recalibrate. Hold fast? The narrative stays intact.

The reaction is understandable. Nvidia has become the bellwether of an era when capital flows toward AI with a fervor that recalls both the internet build-out and the shale boom. Last quarter, the company pulled in more than $44 billion in revenue, most of it coming from data centers that are crammed with Nvidia’s chips. That performance helped keep the broader tech rally intact even as questions about valuation and macro risk started to pile up. 

This week, traders are bracing as though a policy announcement is coming. Consensus is clustered around a blockbuster print: about $46.4 billion in revenue and roughly $1.02 EPS for the quarter, a pace that still implies more than 50% growth from a year ago. Those are extraordinary figures for a company of Nvidia’s size, and they feed the expectation — now a routine — that CEO Jensen Huang will clear a bar most large-caps could never approach. But routine doesn’t mean riskless. Markets are unusually sensitive to tone this week after OpenAI CEO Sam Altman flagged an AI “bubble.” Nvidia could be the swing factor for tech — see: the stock’s 30% year-to-date rise and influence on AI-linked names — and the company’s China outlook and a new revenue-sharing deal with the U.S. government could be the hinge that pushes post-earnings volatility in either direction. 

"Whenever the market has concerns about tech valuations or an AI bubble, NVIDIA usually comes to the rescue and reminds us why there's so much potential and optimism in this space,” Will Rhind, the founder and CEO of GraniteShares, said. “I suspect that's what we'll see again this week.”

At least nine brokers have hiked their price targets recently — Bloomberg pegs the average near $194, with KeyBanc at $215 and TD Cowen at $235 — because Nvidia has consistently outpaced expectations. But this time, investors will likely be less interested in the headline numbers than in the shape of the forecast. They need confirmation that demand remains broad and durable enough to justify the premium. They want a clear accounting of how China fits into guidance now that licensing rules have changed — again. And they expect execution detail on Blackwell shipments at the system level, not just chip counts. If the numbers are strong but the answers are hedged, a “beat” can still read like a warning.

On Wednesday, Nvidia needs to deliver a confident outlook that bridges near-term supply snarls and geopolitical risk. Anything less could unsettle the notion that AI demand alone is enough to levitate valuations.

The guidance gauntlet

Nvidia has turned earnings season into a ritual of raised eyebrows and raised estimates. The pattern has held for more than a year: soaring revenue, expanding data-center share, margins that make even bullish models look timid. Another beat looks more likely than not — but the burden is what comes after the headline.

The macro frame is accommodating but taut. Tech leadership has been fragile; when the group wobbles, the stock that matters most can steer the tape. That’s why an in-line guide won’t cut it. Investors want language that keeps the growth engine running without creating questions on mix or cost. 

Margins are part of the test. Last quarter’s one-time China charges aside, management has anchored investors around low-70s non-GAAP gross margins, and maintaining that cushion matters because the product mix is shifting. That doesn’t have to be a headwind; system-level deployments can sustain pricing power. Blackwell, the new GPU architecture, is moving from launch hype into mass production. Networking gear and full-rack systems are starting to account for a larger slice of revenue. Each of these dynamics can swing profitability by a few points. Analysts would welcome a margin profile that looks predictable. Any hint of turbulence will invite questions about how much the company can absorb in costs while maintaining its high-flying valuation. 

A steady margin profile, paired with a confident demand bridge into the back half, is the cleanest way to keep multiple pressures at bay.

Analysts will also want to see whether Nvidia can continue to meet the market’s insatiable appetite for proof that AI is still scaling. Hyperscaler spending is the main prop: Morgan Stanley estimates that U.S. giants such as Amazon, Microsoft, and Google will spend more than $325 billion on capital expenditures in 2025, with AI infrastructure soaking up a growing share. The math is tantalizing for Nvidia — if even a fraction of that outlay is captured in GPU orders, revenue growth can continue at a clip few mega-caps can match.

But there are complications. Those billions are controlled by a handful of customers whose project schedules are sensitive to permitting, power access, and quarterly budgeting. The risk is not that demand disappears, it’s that orders slip from one quarter to the next. For a company as heavily modeled as Nvidia, even small shifts can move billions in valuation.

China’s toll road

If demand is Nvidia’s engine, China is the wild card that investors are trying to model around. The facts have moved quickly and, at times, in opposite directions. In April, the U.S. imposed licensing requirements on Nvidia’s China-focused H20 chips, forcing the company to absorb a $4.5 billion charge tied to excess inventory and purchase obligations. In May, management warned that the export constraints could shave as much as $8 billion from second-quarter revenue, a hit big enough to matter even in Nvidia’s scale. Then, in July and August, Washington partially reopened the door — approving H20 sales to China but demanding a 15% cut of revenue on those transactions — even as Beijing urged local firms to avoid the H20 and scrutiny on buyers intensified. 

The result is a policy loop that turns China into a swing factor rather than a stable driver. 

The near-term implication for this quarter is stark. William Blair’s Sebastien Naji wrote in a research note that he expects “zero China revenue” in this quarter despite broad strength elsewhere — his base case for a beat-and-raise leans instead on volume deployments of Blackwell GPUs and NVL72 racks. If Nvidia’s earnings call confirms that China is effectively absent from the numbers, investors will shift focus to how — and when — any recovery might flow.

“Guidance for the second half of the year will benefit from the re-inclusion of H20 revenue,” Naji said, adding that he expects another “beat-and-raise quarter” and maintains an “Outperform” rating at $205.

There is a possible off-ramp. Reuters reported last week that Nvidia is working with U.S. officials on a new, scaled Blackwell variant for China — the so-called B30A — that would deliver less performance than unrestricted products but more than the H20 and that would comply with export thresholds if approved. It’s not clear when, or even if, the variant will be green-lit. But if Huang can outline a path to reentering China — timelines, accounting for the 15% revenue skim, how the mix would look without China — then what’s now a wild card could become a modeled tailwind for the back half and early next year. If he can’t, the Street could treat China as a binary option with low near-term odds. 

From hype to hardware

The other knot investors want untied is execution at cabinet scale. It’s one thing to talk about orders; it’s another to ship NVL72 racks in volume through integrators on tight timelines. 

The Street will parse any color on lead times, assembly throughput, and whether or not Blackwell is ramping at the cadence large cloud customers expect. This matters because supply slippage — even in a still-supply-constrained world — can morph a “beat” into a guidance debate, especially if high-margin configurations lag. Recent coverage has pointed to mixed signals in the server ecosystem — Super Micro’s numbers and outlook disappointed two weeks ago, even as partners such as Foxconn have been touting strength in AI server demand. 

None of that proves a bottleneck at Nvidia, but it explains why the market wants specific, rack-level detail instead of generalities. 

There’s also the quality-of-growth question. If cabinet shipments ramp cleanly, systems revenue should follow — not just chips — and that can stabilize margins and attach for networking. If cabinet timing is uneven, buyers can default to standalone accelerators, and the mix might not be as favorable. To be clear, the top-line setup is still powerful; previews across mainstream outlets and real-time market wraps continue to position Nvidia as the hinge for tech sentiment this week. But at a $4 trillion valuation, the market isn’t just measuring “how much” demand there is, but how precisely it converts to revenue and earnings over the next two quarters. 

So what does a good call actually look like? It starts with the obvious: numbers that meet or top the consensus band. It adds a guide that treats China conservatively — explicitly excluding revenues if visibility is poor — while outlining the approval path for any compliant products and spelling out the accounting for the 15% U.S. toll. It includes line-of-sight commentary on Blackwell system deliveries — how many sites are live, where lead times stand, and whether NVL72 throughput at integrators is keeping pace with orders. And it keeps margins boring: steady in the low-70s non-GAAP range with mix dynamics explained rather than waved away. None of that is dramatic. All of it is what sustains belief.

The flip side is just as clear. If Nvidia’s guidance leans on China without crisp caveats or if cabinet execution is addressed in marketing language rather than operational detail, investors could default to caution. That doesn’t mean belief in AI fades; it means the timing gets harder to underwrite, and valuation bears the stress. Expectations are high, the stock is heavy with gains, and the China framework now includes a policy toll that sits on top of the usual forecasting noise. 

Wednesday’s call is where those strands either knit together or fray.

This week, with markets more volatile and AI stocks wobbling, the burden is heavier: Nvidia doesn’t just need to prove that demand is strong, it needs to prove that it’s durable enough to justify a trillion-dollar premium. Nvidia has earned the right to be graded on a curve. Few companies have scaled this fast with this much consistency. But the bar keeps rising because the stock did first.