NVIDIA Crushes Earnings Expectations, Validates AI Thesis

NVIDIA's latest earnings report has crushed expectations, validating its AI thesis. Revenue came in at $96.2 billion, a 106% increase from last year and an 18% quarter-over-quarter gain. Data-center revenue surged to $89 billion, a 117% year-over-year increase.

CEO Jensen Huang called it an inflection point, stating that AI is doing useful work, its tokens are productive and profitable, and compute is now revenue. The company returned $26 billion to shareholders through buybacks and dividends and has another $99 billion authorized for repurchases.

Salesforce also impressed with a 11% stock price increase after reassuring investors it can compete and monetize in the AI era. This highlights that the AI story cannot live on chips alone, and infrastructure spending must produce useful applications, productivity, and revenue.