Huang closes out the call. Nvidia shares are trading up around 4.25% after hours.

“AI is growing faster and will be larger than any platform shifts before, including the Internet, mobile, and cloud,” Huang says.

The CEO says “inference is exploding,” and the company’s Blackwell chip system is designed to “power the full AI lifecycle.” Huang wraps up by mentioning Nvidia’s upcoming tour in Europe and ends the call with, “see you in Paris.”

Huang says he trusts the President’s vision for export controls, but that Nvidia’s ability to innovate around the ban on H20 chips is limited at the moment.

The existing restrictions on chips Nvidia can sell into China, “pretty much make it impossible for us to reduce Hopper any further,” Huang says.

UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri asks if the company is working on another strategy for a compliant chip. Huang replies: “The key is to understand the limits and see if we can come up with interesting products that could continue to serve the Chinese market. We don’t have anything at the moment, but we’re considering it.”

Huang says “agents are really quite successful” and much more “game-changing” than generative AI, setting up the path to success for enterprise AI.

“Agents can understand ambiguous and rather implicit instructions and are able to problem solve and use tools and have memory,” he says.

The first positive surprise is the “exponential growth” in inference reasoning, Huang says.

Huang mentions the rescinding of “AI diffusion” as the second positive surprise. He says the world is awakening to “the importance of AI as an infrastructure.”

Huang says the third surprise is “enterprise AI,” and, more specifically, agentic AI. He says agents can understand “implicit instructions” and problem solve using tools and memory.”

Agentic AI is game-changing,” Huang says.

Lastly, Huang mentions “industrial AI.” He says all of the new plants and factories are being created at the right time.”Every factory will have an AI factory associated with it,” Huang says

Huang says he’s going to be “on the road next week through Europe,” continuing his world tour for AI that’s been going for the past several months.

His latest trips include a visit to Beijing, meeting with Chinese officials and DeepSeek CEO Wenfeng Liang — as well as his trip to Taiwan and Saudi Arabia.

During the call, he clearly explains his rationale: “Just about every country needs to build out its AI infrastructure.”

Nvidia’s CEO says it has more Blackwell orders than it had at the company’s GTC conference.

He adds that Nvidia is increasing its supply chain and building it out. “We’re building it here on shore, United States,” Huang says.

Nvidia’s CFO breaks down the losses from H20 sales in China.

Nvidia incurred a $4.5 billion charge in Q1 due to lost H20 revenue in China. The charge was associated with excess inventory of H20 and purchase obligations as demand for the chip slumped. That’s $1 billion less than the chipmaker had predicted.

However, the chipmaker was unable to ship an additional $2.5 billion of H20 revenue in Q1.

Nvidia’s Q2 outlook reflects a loss in H20 revenue of approximately $8 billion — a huge number.

Huang fields the first question, which is about demand for reasoning inference.

Huang says, “We would like to serve all of it, and I think we’re on track to serve most of It.”

Nvidia’s autos revenue was down 1% sequentially, but up 72% year on year, year on year.

“Growth was driven by the ramp of self-driving across a number of customers and robust and demand for NEVs, Kress says.

“We are partnering with GM to build the next-gen vehicles, factories, and robots using Nvidia AI simulation and accelerated computing, and we are now in production with our full stack solution for Mercedes Benz, starting with the new CLA hitting roads,” she adds.

And here’s another reminder of Nvidia’s roots. Amid all the AI talk, Nvidia still remains a power player in the gaming industry.

The company reports a record $3.8 billion revenue for the quarter, up 48% from the last quarter. The CFO says Nintendo’s upcoming console, the Switch 2, uses Nvidia’s neural rendering and AI tech.

Kress says Nintendo has shipped 150 million consoles to date.

Kress says Nvidia’s China data center revenue was “slightly below” expectations due to H20 export restrictions.

“For Q2, we expect a meaningful decrease in China data center revenue,” the CFO says.

Nvidia CFO Kress says the company has “a line of sight to projects requiring tens of gigawatts of Nvidia AI infrastructure in the not-too-distant future.”

That’s roughly the energy output of about 10 nuclear reactors.

Nvidia’s CFO says the chipmaker is seeing a “sharp jump in inference demand.”

Kress said OpenAI, Microsoft, and Google are experiencing a “leap in token generation.” She says Microsoft, for example, processed more than 100 trillion tokens in Q1, which is a fivefold increase year-over-year. The “exponential growth” is representative of “strong demand for” AI services across Microsoft’s platform, she adds.

Kress starts by highlighting a “challenging” economic environment. However, she says Nvidia’s customer commitments are “firm.”

“Losing access to the China AI accelerator market, which we believe will grow to nearly $50 billion, would have a material adverse impact on our business going forward and benefit our foreign competitors in China and worldwide,” Kress says.

Gil Luria, head of technology research at D.A. Davidson, told BI that the results weren’t as bad as some expected, given the recent China export restrictions.

“Nvidia results were not as bad as feared considering the increased restrictions on selling into China,” Luria said. “While revenue guidance for the second quarter was lower, it incorporates the increased restrictions.”

EMARKETER analyst Jacob Bourne told BI that while Nvidia beat earnings expectations, the chipmaker is facing increasing challenges with maintaining market dominance.

In addition to geopolitical tension, Nvidia is also facing pressure from rival chipmakers, like AMD, which has gained “ground on cost-effectiveness metrics for certain AI workloads,” Bourne said. He added that there are also broader concerns around trade tensions and looming tariffs creating headwinds for AI chip demand.

“This doesn’t signal an end to Nvidia’s dominance,” Bourne said. “But highlights that sustaining it will require navigating an increasingly complex landscape of geopolitical, competitive, and economic challenges.”

FIRST QUARTER RESULTS

Revenue $44.06 billion, +69% y/y, estimate $43.29 billion

– Data center revenue $39.1 billion, +73% y/y, estimate $39.22

billion

– Automotive revenue $567 million, +72% y/y, estimate $579.4

million

– Adjusted gross margin 61% vs. 78.9% y/y, estimate 71%

-R&D expenses $3.99 billion, +47% y/y, estimate $4.07 billion

– Adjusted operating expenses $3.58 billion, +43% y/y, estimate

$3.63 billion

– Adjusted operating income $23.28 billion, +29% y/y, estimate

$27.15 billion

– Adjusted EPS 81c, estimate 93c

– Free cash flow $26.14 billion, +75% y/y

Source: Bloomberg

Nvidia stock rose 1% heading into the closing bell on Wednesday. Shares were trading around $137 a share.

The stock is up nearly 2% year-to-date, outpacing the broader S&P 500’s 0.5% gain.

Nvidia announced a partnership with Saudi tech firm Humain on May 13 to strengthen sovereign AI infrastructure and elevate the country’s position as an AI developer. The chipmaker’s stock surged to its highest valuation since February following the announcement.

Nvidia said in an announcement that the first phase of the 500 megawatt buildout will be a deployment of 18,000 Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell AI chips.

Nvidia defines “sovereign AI” as a nation’s capability to produce AI with its own resources, the chipmaker wrote on its website. It’s an area that Huang has emphasized multiple times.

“It codifies your culture, your society’s intelligence, your common sense, your history — you own your own data,” Huang at the World Governments Summit in Dubai last year.

— Ana Altcheck

Huang announced at the tech show Computex on May 19 that Nvidia is looking at the Beitou Shilin area in northern Taipei for a new Nvidia office named “Nvidia Constellation.”

Taipei’s mayor Chiang Wan-an, who showed up at Huang’s keynote, said in an interview following the announcement that the city government welcomes the chipmaker’s office and will provide assistance as needed.

Huang, who was born in Taiwan, also announced a partnership with TSMC to build an AI supercomputer in Taiwan. The project will be a joint effort between the Taiwanese government and Taiwan manufacturing firm Foxconn.

— Ana Altchek

At GTC this year, Jensen Huang announced plans for Nvidia to build a quantum research lab in Boston.

“It will likely be the most advanced accelerated hybrid quantum computing research lab world,” Huang said. “And it’s going to be located in Boston so that we can partner with Harvard and MIT.”

Wednesday’s earnings call is the company’s first since the announcement, and the quantum sector has been booming. Some notable startups include D-Wave, whose stock has risen over 138% in the last 30 days as of May 27; IonQ, whose shares have risen over 67% in the same timeframe; and Rigetti Computing, whose stock has increased by more than 53% in the last month.

As tech giants, including Nvidia, expand their quantum offerings, investors are keen on tangible road maps for their progress in the burgeoning field. Expect to see those plans mentioned more often going forward.

— Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert

Angelo Zino, a senior equity strategist at CFRA Research, said the outlook for Nvidia had “considerably improved” in recent weeks, pointing to progress between the US and China in securing a framework trade deal and the US getting rid of its AI diffusion rule, which would have imposed restrictions on Nvidia’s chip sales to China.

Nvidia’s recent Saudi Arabia deal also gives the company “strategic importance” in the US’s trade negotiations with other countries, Zino wrote in a note to clients.

“We believe NVDA’s content growth story in data centers will extend through at least 2027, supported by its product pipeline,” Zino said. “While quarterly variability is a risk, we view any pullbacks as enhanced buying opportunities given the better policy backdrop/customer visibility,” he added.

It’s the first earnings call for the company since US lawmakers said in April they were investigating how the Chinese AI company DeepSeek may have gotten Nvidia chips.

House Representatives said in a report that it appeared DeepSeek had used 60,000 Nvidia chips even though US sanctions limited the sale of the company’s tech in China. The lawmakers also accused Jensen Huang of directing the design of Nvidia chips to get around US export controls.

The company said in a statement at the time that “the US government instructs American business on what they can sell and where — we follow the government’s directions to the letter.”

— Kelsey Vlamis

While earnings for Nvidia should be “fine” for the first quarter, guidance will likely be lowered in the second quarter to account for a hit to the company’s revenue in China, analysts estimated.

“With regard to the F2Q26 we are slightly lowering estimates to account for a full hit from China,” the firm wrote in a note this month.

Still, demand for Nvidia’s products will likely remain on a solid trajectory in the coming years, the firm said, pointing to Nvidia’s recent deal with Saudia Arabia.

The research firm reiterated its “buy” rating on the stock and issued a price target of $150 a share, implying 11% upside from current levels.

Nvidia’s almost 25% share price jump this past month has come hand-in-hand with several announcements that place its chips at the center of vast new AI data centers.

During a trip to Saudi Arabia this month, Jensen Huang revealed a deal to ship 18,000 of Nvidia’s top chips to the country. Last week, the FT reported that Oracle will buy $40 billion worth of chips from Nvidia for a US data center.

Any sign that more deals are coming down the line could reassure investors that huge revenue growth in the chip giant’s lucrative data center business is still achievable.

— Hasan Chowdhury

Nvidia’s stock is up 25% in the last month. In an earnings preview note, Jefferies analysts led by Blayne Curtis wrote that Nvidia’s stock “has been running over the past few weeks” following an easing of AI restrictions by the US government and recent announcements of AI projects with the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia.

The analysts wrote that they don’t expect these developments to help today’s results or guidance for the current quarter. The main drag on earnings will likely come from the Trump administration’s restriction on selling H20 chips to China. Still, the analysts expect quarter-on-quarter growth to be viewed positively by investors and that Nvidia’s supply chain issues will be resolved.

The networking business should also pick up, alleviating some investor concerns around potential market share loss in that sector, the analysts wrote in last week’s note.

— Shubhangi Goel

Restrictions on chip sales in China will likely remain an “overhang” on Nvidia until new rules are implemented, analysts at DA Davidson wrote.

New restrictions on chips sold in China could also come “any day,” they added, despite the Trump administration recently rolling back Biden’s AI diffusion rule.

The firm reiterated its “neutral” rating on the stock and issued a $120 price target, which they said was dependent on factors like how regulation in China will shake out and if some of Nvidia’s neocloud customers face borrowing challenges. The price target implies 11% downside from current levels.

In April, President Donald Trump placed restrictions on exports of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China. The chipmaker said it expected a $5.5 billion write-down in its first-quarter earnings as a result of the new restrictions.

During the Computex Taipei tech conference in Taiwan on May 21, Huang said the chipmaker’s market share in China dropped to 50%, down from 95% four years ago. He added that Chinese companies have benefited from US chip export rules, and they have been “a failure.”

The chipmaker is reportedly planning to begin mass production for a less powerful AI chipset for China at a lower price as early as June, Reuters reported on Monday.

— Ana Altcheck

Piper Sandler said it expects Nvidia to miss on revenue for the first quarter. That’s due to uncertainties related to the US economy, tariffs, and the ban on its H20 chip in China.

“All in all, we think that NVDA is poised to be flat to down into the print this week,” analysts wrote.

Still, the firm sees Nvidia benefiting from a strong second half of the year. That’s due to strong capital expenditures from other tech firms and an improving macroeconomic backdrop.

“We advise investors to weather the uncertainty and stay long the stock as this is likely largely the last wave of negative news for NVDA this year.”

The firm reiterated its “overweight” rating on Nvidia and issued a $150 price target, implying 11% upside from current levels.

A concern often raised by Nvidia investors is the small pool of customers it has depended on to generate billions of dollars in revenue. A handful of Big Tech firms have accounted for more than half of Nvidia’s data center revenue as the AI boom has taken shape.

But Nvidia has shown signs that its days of depending on West Coast tech firms may soon be over. Deals to sell its chips to nation states with plans to build sovereign AI capabilities have been picking up. Investors could look to get a clearer roadmap on plans to widen its customer base.

— Hasan Chowdhury

Nvidia should post a “modest” sales beat in the first quarter, but analysts at Bank of America said the company’s guidance for the current quarter could be “messy. ” They pointed to the impact of tariffs on Nvidia’s shipments from China.

The bank estimated that Nvidia could see a $4 billion to $5 billion headwind on shipments from China in the second quarter. Sales guidance for the second quarter could be revised down to $41 billion, down from the $46 billion consensus estimate.

BofA estimated that Nvidia’s total sales for the 2026 fiscal year could be around 6% below consensus, while earnings could be around 10% below consensus.

“Despite these near-term headwinds, we maintain Buy on NVDA, a top sector pick given its unique leverage to the global AI deployment cycle and possibility for China sales recovery on new redesigned/compliant products later in the year,” analysts wrote.

The bank has a price target of $160 a share, implying 19% upside from current levels.

First quarter

• Revenue estimate: $43.32 billion

  • Data center revenue estimate: $39.36 billion
  • Compute revenue estimate: $35.47 billion
  • Networking revenue estimate: $3.45 billion
  • Gaming revenue estimate: $2.85 billion
  • Professional Visualization revenue estimate: $505.8 million
  • Automotive revenue estimate: $584.2 million
• Adjusted gross margin estimate: 71.1%
• R&D expenses estimate: $4.06 billion
• Adjusted operating expenses estimate: $3.63 billion
• Adjusted operating income estimate: $25.66 billion
• Adjusted EPS estimate: 88c
• Capital expenditure estimate: $888.2 million

Second quarter

• Revenue estimate: $46.37 billion
• Adjusted gross margin estimate: 72%
• Adjusted operating expenses estimate: $3.86 billion
• Capital expenditure estimate: $913.9 million

Full year 2026

• Revenue estimate: $200.56 billion
• Capital expenditure estimate: $3.82 billion