There's a moment in every boxer's career when he's taken so many hits that a punch that would floor any mortal is just another round. Nvidia has reached that point — except it's the one throwing the punches.
The company reported fourth fiscal quarter results on Wednesday and, once again, made the Wall Street consensus look like a bunch of interns trying to guess the final score. Adjusted earnings per share of $1.62 versus the $1.53 expected. Revenue of $68.13 billion versus $66.21 billion estimated. And the guidance? $78 billion for next quarter, against the $72.6 billion analysts had projected.
Read that again: the company beat the forward revenue expectation by more than $5 billion. That's roughly the annual GDP of a small country. And what did the stock do? Ticked up slightly in after-hours and gave almost all of it back.
Damn. Welcome to the new normal.
The Money-Printing Machine Called Data Center
The data center segment — which is basically the Nvidia today — delivered $62.3 billion in revenue. Growth of 75% year over year. Representing more than 91% of the company's total revenue.
When over 90% of your revenue comes from a single segment and that segment is growing 75% a year, you're not a chip company anymore. You are the infrastructure of the AI revolution. It's like being the company selling pickaxes during the gold rush — except your pickaxes cost millions of dollars and everybody has to buy them.
Net income nearly doubled: $43 billion versus $22.1 billion in the same period a year ago. To put that in perspective, Nvidia earns in one quarter more than most S&P 500 companies earn in an entire decade.
The Hyperscalers Keep Throwing Money Into the Fire
Nvidia itself confirmed in CFO Colette Kress's commentary: the hyperscalers — Google, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft — remain the largest customer category, accounting for more than 50% of data center revenue.
And here's the number that should make any investor pay attention: the combined capex of these four giants could approach $700 billion this year. Seven. Hundred. Billion. Dollars. Being poured into AI infrastructure.
Anyone who thinks this is a bubble needs to answer one simple question: do you think Tim Cook, Satya Nadella, Zuckerberg, and Sundar Pichai are playing poker with $700 billion in chips and no cards in hand? These guys have real skin in the game. They're not Twitter analysts with wolf avatars.
The Detail Most People Missed: Networking Exploded
Within data center, networking revenue — the components that connect hundreds of GPUs into massive systems — jumped 263% year over year, reaching nearly $11 billion. This reflects heavy adoption of NVLink and Spectrum-X Ethernet switches, with fat new contracts from Meta and friends.
In plain English: having the chip isn't enough. You need to connect those chips to each other so they function as a supercomputer. And Nvidia is dominating that layer too. It's as if a car manufacturer sold you the car, the fuel, and the roads.
Gaming Falls Behind (and Nobody Cares)
The gaming division — which was once the heart of Nvidia — grew 47% year over year but dropped 13% from the prior quarter. There are rumors the company might skip launching a new gaming GPU this year. The reason? Memory shortages are forcing prioritization of AI processors.
Gaming has become the middle child. The whole family now revolves around the firstborn called data center.
Vera Rubin: The Next Bullet in the Chamber
The first samples of the next-generation Vera Rubin system — the successor to Grace Blackwell — were shipped to customers this week. The promise is 10x more performance per watt. In a world where data centers are facing severe power constraints, energy efficiency is the new gold.
And Nvidia is diversifying its supply chain beyond Asia, bringing production to the U.S. and Latin America. Geopolitics calls the shots, and Jensen Huang is no fool.
What This Means for You
Nvidia's guidance did not include data center revenue from China. You read that right: zero China in the projection and they still guided for $78 billion. The Chinese market, if it comes back, is pure upside.
The question remains the same as always, but now with even more absurd numbers: how long can this growth rate hold up? And what happens to the entire market when — not if, when — it decelerates?
Because a company growing 73% a year and the market barely flinches... that's not confidence.
That's an expectation of perfection.
And perfection, my friend, is the mother of all traps.
