NVIDIA delivered another blockbuster quarter Wednesday, reporting a 140% jump in adjusted earnings and an 85% surge in revenue as explosive demand for artificial intelligence infrastructure helped ease growing concerns that the AI investment frenzy was becoming detached from economic reality.
The results sent major US equity indexes roughly 1% higher and reinforced Nvidia's position at the center of the global AI race, even after several high-profile hedge funds and prominent investors had trimmed or bet against the stock in recent months.
The chipmaker reported fiscal first-quarter adjusted earnings per share of $1.87, up from $0.78 a year earlier. Revenue climbed to $81.62 billion from $44.06 billion during the same quarter last year, driven overwhelmingly by demand for AI-focused data center hardware.
For the current quarter, Nvidia projected revenue of approximately $91 billion, plus or minus 2%, despite excluding any contribution from China-related data center compute revenue.
The scale of the growth immediately shifted attention back toward Nvidia's core argument: that the AI infrastructure buildout remains in its early stages rather than nearing exhaustion.
"The buildout of AI factories is accelerating at extraordinary speed," Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said in the company's earnings release.
Huang added that "agentic AI is already here, executing productive work, driving real value, and scaling swiftly across industries," while arguing Nvidia remains "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."
The company's data center division once again carried the quarter.
Revenue from the segment surged 92% year over year to $75.2 billion, underscoring how aggressively cloud providers, governments and enterprises continue purchasing AI accelerators and computing infrastructure despite persistent concerns over valuation and sustainability.
Those fears had intensified in recent months as several well-known hedge funds reduced exposure to Nvidia shares during the first quarter.
Among those reportedly trimming positions were David Tepper's Appaloosa, Ken Griffin's Citadel Advisors and Steve Cohen's Point72. Meanwhile, investor Michael Burry has continued maintaining a substantial bearish position tied to skepticism surrounding broader AI market fundamentals.
Nvidia's earnings report, however, complicated the argument that AI enthusiasm is running far ahead of commercial demand.
The company also aggressively increased shareholder returns, signaling confidence that cash generation will continue accelerating alongside AI spending.
During the quarter, Nvidia returned a record $20 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends. On 18 May, the board approved an additional $80 billion in stock repurchase authorization, significantly expanding the company's existing buyback program, which still had $38.5 billion remaining before the increase.
The board simultaneously approved a dramatic dividend hike.
Nvidia raised its quarterly dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share, payable on 26 June to shareholders of record on 4 June. The increase represents a 2,400% jump and substantially boosts income for large shareholders, including Huang himself.
As of March 2025, Huang reportedly held more than 922 million Nvidia shares. At the new dividend rate, his estimated annual dividend income could exceed $922 million, compared with roughly $36.8 million previously.
