NVIDIA just delivered another massive earnings forecast, but interestingly, Wall Street still seems harder to impress now than it was a year ago. The AI chip giant said it expects around $91 billion in revenue for the second quarter, comfortably above analyst expectations, showing that the company’s growth machine is still moving at full speed. Yet despite beating forecasts again and announcing a gigantic $80 billion stock buyback program, Nvidia shares still slipped in after-hours trading. That reaction honestly says a lot about how expectations around the AI industry have become almost impossible to satisfy now.
CEO Jensen Huang spent much of the earnings discussion trying to reassure investors that Nvidia’s dominance in artificial intelligence is far from slowing down. According to the company, demand continues pouring in from hyperscale cloud giants, AI-focused startups, and data center operators racing to expand infrastructure. Nvidia also boosted its quarterly cash dividend dramatically, increasing it from just 1 cent to 25 cents per share, which many investors viewed as another sign of confidence from the company.
The bigger concern, though, is no longer whether Nvidia can sell AI chips. That part seems almost guaranteed at this point. Instead, investors are beginning to question how long this extraordinary AI spending wave can realistically continue, especially as rival companies and custom-built chips start entering the picture more aggressively. Analysts have started focusing heavily on whether the AI boom can maintain this momentum into 2027 and 2028 instead of cooling off after the initial infrastructure rush.
Jensen Huang Says Nvidia Can Still Grow Faster Than Big Tech
One major detail from Nvidia’s earnings discussion involved how quickly global AI infrastructure spending is exploding. Tech giants like Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet Inc. are reportedly expected to spend more than $700 billion combined on AI infrastructure this year alone. That figure has jumped massively compared to last year, showing just how aggressive the industry’s AI expansion has become.
Still, Jensen Huang believes Nvidia itself can grow even faster than those companies. During the investor call, he pointed to a growing segment of AI-specific cloud providers that are now becoming major customers alongside traditional hyperscalers. According to Huang, these AI-focused firms are expanding even faster quarter-over-quarter, creating an entirely new layer of demand for Nvidia hardware. That’s one reason Nvidia still believes its growth story remains far from over despite increasing competition across the chip industry.
At the same time, rivals are closing in from multiple directions. Companies like AMD and Intel are pushing harder into AI inference markets, while several of Nvidia’s biggest customers are quietly building their own custom chips internally. Large cloud firms increasingly want to reduce dependence on Nvidia’s expensive processors, especially as AI workloads evolve beyond initial model training toward large-scale inference systems. That shift could slowly weaken Nvidia’s dominance over time even if demand remains enormous overall.
Nvidia’s New Vera Chip Could Open Another Giant Market
To defend its position, Nvidia is already preparing its next major hardware push. Huang highlighted the company’s upcoming “Vera” processors during the earnings call, describing them as an entry point into a completely new $200 billion market opportunity. Nvidia reportedly expects around $20 billion in Vera-related sales by the end of the current fiscal year, and notably, those numbers were not even included inside the company’s earlier projection of $1 trillion in Blackwell and Rubin AI chip sales between 2025 and 2027.
Huang admitted, however, that supply problems may continue following the launch of the Vera Rubin platform later this year. Nvidia is already dealing with pressure from the ongoing global memory chip crunch, forcing the company to spend heavily on securing supply chains and avoiding manufacturing disruptions. The company’s supply-related spending reportedly climbed sharply to $119 billion during the fiscal first quarter as Nvidia tries to prevent shortages from slowing future growth.
Financially, the company’s latest numbers still look extremely strong. Nvidia reported first-quarter revenue of $81.62 billion, while data center revenue alone reached $75.2 billion — both figures beating analyst expectations comfortably. Adjusted earnings also came in ahead of forecasts, continuing Nvidia’s streak of outperforming Wall Street estimates quarter after quarter.
But despite those giant numbers, the mood surrounding Nvidia has clearly shifted slightly. Investors no longer just want explosive growth — they now want proof that the AI revolution can sustain these spending levels for many more years. Right now, Nvidia remains the biggest winner of the AI boom by a huge margin, but the pressure to keep dominating the market is also becoming bigger with every single quarter.
