4 minBusiness
Nvidia forecasts 70% revenue growth for next fiscal year, shares jump
Nvidia projected a 70% revenue increase for fiscal 2028, far exceeding analyst expectations, and reported strong quarterly earnings driven by AI chip demand.
Nvidia jolted investors Wednesday with a first-ever year-ahead forecast, projecting revenue growth of roughly 70% for the next fiscal year and signaling that demand for its artificial intelligence chips continues to accelerate. The company's shares rose more than 4% in after-hours trading following the announcement.
The preliminary expectation for fiscal 2028 revenue implies a range of $690 billion to $700 billion, more than $100 billion above the $570 billion that analysts had been modeling, according to Visible Alpha consensus data. The projection represents a significant departure from Nvidia's usual practice of providing guidance only one quarter at a time.
«We wanted to make sure that everybody has the same set of information,» Chief Executive Jensen Huang said on a conference call with investors. «We've got a huge year coming up next year, and it's going to be pretty extraordinary.» Huang acknowledged the novelty of the move, noting, «It is the case that we've never forecasted, never guided to a year in advance.»
The forecast came alongside quarterly results that exceeded expectations across the board. Revenue for the fiscal second quarter reached $96.2 billion, up 106% from a year earlier and above the $92.2 billion analysts projected. The company earned $2.22 per share on a non-GAAP basis, surpassing estimates in the range of $2.06 to $2.09. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress guided next quarter to $108 billion in revenue, matching the so-called buyside whisper range.
Melissa Otto, global head of Visible Alpha research at S&P Global, said the magnitude of the top-line growth «blew away expectations,» especially given that Nvidia does not normally provide such long-range guidance. «I think what wowed the market was that 70% fiscal year 2028 number that they gave that was way ahead of Visible Alpha consensus,» Otto said. «I think the whole market was like, 'Whoa, 70%.'»
Huang attributed the surging demand to a broad set of customers, including hyperscale cloud providers, sovereign AI initiatives, neoclouds, AI startups, and enterprises. He noted that non-hyperscale customers now represent about half of Nvidia's business and are growing at 100% annually. The rise of agentic AI, which consumes significantly more compute than human users, is also driving demand. Huang said the amount of compute an AI agent uses versus a human user is about 15 to 100 times greater, depending on the task.
Despite the optimistic outlook, Nvidia faces significant supply constraints. «Our entire supply chain is challenged, and it's everybody; everybody is really running flat out,» Huang said. He added that if not for these constraints, revenue growth next year would be even greater. «Even though our demand is much greater than 70%, our supply allows us to confidently deliver 70%,» he said.
Kress also addressed concerns about Nvidia's investments in other AI companies, which some critics have described as «circular financing.» The company has disclosed maximum gross guarantee exposure of $108.5 billion, mostly stemming from credit support for SB Energy's Ohio tech campus, which will host Nvidia compute leased to OpenAI. Nvidia has also publicized investments of nearly $50 billion in frontier AI labs and partnered with private equity firms to raise more than $500 billion for AI infrastructure.
«We recognize the scale of this support, and we know some will call this circular financing,» Kress said. «We see it differently.» She argued that frontier AI labs have proven technology leadership and strong customer traction, and she expects them to become «the largest technology companies in history.» Their growth, she said, «isn't limited by their technology or customer demand. It's limited by compute.»
