Nvidia's Data Center Revenue Hits $89 Billion as Supply Caps 70% of Demand

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said the company could sell twice as many chips next year compared to this year, speaking during a speech in Scotland last Thursday. Nvidia just started shipping its next-generation data center system, Vera Rubin, which includes the Rubin GPU, the Vera central processing unit, and upgraded networking components, and can deliver up to 30 times more performance than the equivalent Blackwell Ultra system while cutting inference token costs by 97%. Huang said every frontier AI company planned to adopt Vera Rubin at launch, unlike Blackwell Ultra. Nvidia is on track to deliver around $411 billion in total revenue during its current 2027 fiscal year, based on Wall Street's average estimate, and management recently told shareholders to expect 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028, implying almost $700 billion next year. Nvidia stock trades at a price-to-earnings ratio of 28.1, less than half its 10-year average of 61.4, though risks include roughly $175 billion of fiscal 2028 sales potentially funded by Nvidia's own balance sheet, about 25% of that year's revenue according to CFO Colette Kress.

Zacks Investment Research released its Q3 earnings preview, projecting S&P 500 earnings will rise 24% from a year earlier, the eighth straight quarter of double-digit growth for the index. Fourteen of the 16 Zacks sectors are on track for positive earnings growth, with five set for double-digit gains: Aerospace up 159.3%, Energy up 111.9%, Tech up 41.9%, Basic Materials up 31.2%, and Transportation up 15.1%. Conglomerates is the only sector expected to post lower earnings, down 35.4%, while Consumer Staples is seen flat. Excluding Energy, S&P 500 growth drops to 20%, and excluding Tech it falls to 14.4%. Nvidia's Q3 earnings are expected to rise 90% year over year on 91.2% higher revenues, while Micron's earnings and revenue growth rates are seen at 938% and 348.6%, respectively; excluding those two companies, Tech sector earnings growth is cut by slightly more than half. The season's spotlight falls on the big banks reporting October 13, though the cycle began with September 10 releases from Oracle and Adobe, followed by Lennar; six more index members report this week, including Costco, AutoZone and Darden. The three S&P 500 members that have reported so far show earnings up 22.6% on 14.9% higher revenues, with 33.3% beating EPS estimates and 66.7% beating revenue estimates.