이미지: Fortune · METAL LAB 편집
Summary
- NVIDIA's fiscal Q2 2026 revenue (period ending July 26) hit $96.2 billion, up 106% year-over-year and above the $92.2 billion analysts had expected on average.
- In an unusual move, NVIDIA projected 70% annual revenue growth for fiscal 2028, far exceeding the 44% average growth analysts had forecast.
- Q3 revenue guidance of $91 billion fell short of the $103.9 billion analysts had expected on average, but shares still rose more than 5% in after-hours trading following the earnings release.
- 2분기 매출
- 962억 달러 (전년 대비 106%↑, 전분기 대비 18%↑, 예상 922억 달러 상회)
- 데이터센터 매출
- 890억 달러 (예상 857억 달러) — 하이퍼스케일 487억 달러 + ACIE 403억 달러
- 비GAAP 주당순이익
- 2.22달러 (예상 2.06~2.09달러)
- FY2028 매출 성장 전망
- 70% (애널리스트 평균 예상 44%)
- 3분기 매출 가이던스
- 910억 달러 ±2% (애널리스트 평균 예상 1039억 달러)
- 시간외 주가
- 발표 직후 소폭 하락 후 콘퍼런스콜 중 5% 이상 상승
- 전년 동기 데이터센터 매출
- 391억 달러 (전분기 752억 달러에서 92% 증가)
A record quarter, but the math got more complicated
NVIDIA posted $96.2 billion in revenue for fiscal Q2 2026, the period ending July 26. That's up 18% from the prior quarter and 106% from a year earlier, comfortably clearing the $92.2 billion average analyst estimate. Non-GAAP earnings per share came in at $2.22, above the $2.06-to-$2.09 range analysts had projected. One caveat worth flagging: starting this quarter, NVIDIA began including stock-based compensation costs in its non-GAAP results, which makes a direct comparison to last quarter's non-GAAP $1.87 and GAAP $2.39 figures less straightforward.
Data center once again drove the growth
Data center, which accounts for the vast majority of NVIDIA's revenue, brought in $89 billion, beating the $85.7 billion analysts had forecast. That's up 92% from $39.1 billion in the same segment a year ago. Starting this quarter, NVIDIA began breaking the segment down into two categories: Hyperscale at $48.7 billion and ACIE (AI Cloud, Industrial, and Enterprise) at $40.3 billion. The split appears designed to separate demand from large cloud customers versus AI-native clouds, sovereign AI projects, and on-premises enterprise buyers.
| Metric | Actual | Analyst Estimate |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue | $96.2 billion | $92.2 billion |
| Data center revenue | $89 billion | $85.7 billion |
| Non-GAAP EPS | $2.22 | $2.06-$2.09 |
| Q3 revenue guidance | $91 billion | $103.9 billion |
An unusual bet — leading with FY2028 growth
Breaking from its usual practice of only offering next-quarter guidance, NVIDIA got ahead of itself and projected 70% annual revenue growth for fiscal 2028. It didn't put a dollar figure on that growth, but the number itself dwarfs the 44% average growth analysts had penciled in. Pinning down an annual outlook for a market accustomed to quarter-by-quarter results is a striking show of confidence.
Q3 guidance missed, but the stock climbed anyway
The guidance for the quarter actually in progress told a different story: $91 billion (plus or minus 2%), short of the $103.9 billion analysts had expected on average. Shares dipped slightly right after the earnings release, but the mood shifted as management walked through the results on the conference call, and the stock ended up more than 5% higher in after-hours trading. CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement, "AI has reached its inflection point. It's doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue" — signaling that compute itself is now translating directly into revenue. He added that "demand is accelerating."
Domestic markets reacted immediately
According to domestic reports, shares of Samsung Electronics and SK hynix rose in tandem during intraday trading right after NVIDIA's earnings release. Both companies supply the memory chips that go into NVIDIA's AI chips, so NVIDIA's stronger demand outlook appears to have flowed straight through to investor sentiment in Korea's semiconductor sector.
NVIDIA's recent investment in data center developer Cloverleaf is one example of how the company is responding to that growing demand.
Editor's take
What stands out most about this earnings report isn't the numbers themselves but how the market reacted to them. A Q3 guidance miss would typically be bad news for a stock, but investors seemed far more focused on the 70% FY2028 growth forecast NVIDIA put out for the first time. That suggests the market trusts the company's own picture of the next year more than it worries about any single quarterly number.
Anyone who's followed NVIDIA's earnings for a few quarters now knows the pattern by heart: data center revenue beats expectations, next-quarter guidance rattles the market, and then Jensen Huang says something that settles everyone down. This time, the line was "compute is revenue" — the CEO essentially staking his claim, right there on the earnings call, that the raw computation powering AI models has itself become a moneymaker.
For Korean semiconductor companies, the practical takeaway is fairly clear. The volume and pricing of Samsung Electronics' and SK hynix's memory supply contracts are likely to track closely with NVIDIA's annual growth outlook. That said, reports suggest AI server prices have already risen due to higher memory costs, so whether stronger demand actually translates into bigger profits for Korean suppliers will depend on how their margins hold up.
In the coming weeks, NVIDIA will likely unveil more concrete orders and investment deals to back up its 70% FY2028 growth projection. Given that infrastructure and customer investments — in companies like Cloverleaf and Perplexity — are already underway, the next phase after this earnings report will be about the deals that actually fill in that growth number.
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