Every quarter there is a debate about whether AI spending has peaked. Every quarter Nvidia’s results have answered it the same way. On August 26, 2026, it reported revenue of $96.2 billion for the three months to July 26, more than double the same quarter a year earlier.
The headline numbers
From Nvidia’s results release:
| Q2 fiscal 2027 | Change | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue | $96.2 billion | +106% year on year, +18% quarter on quarter |
| Data centre revenue | $89.0 billion | the large majority of the total |
| Gross margin | 75.0% | |
| Q3 guidance | $108.0 billion ±2% | excludes China data-centre compute |
For context, three months earlier Nvidia had reported first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85%, raised its quarterly dividend from $0.01 to $0.25 and authorised another $80 billion of buybacks. (Some coverage has misstated the first-half total; adding the two quarters gives $177.8 billion.)
The China asterisk
Nvidia’s guidance again assumed no revenue from selling data-centre compute chips to China. That reflects a year of uncertainty: the US eased licensing for H200 sales to China in January with conditions, Chinese authorities reportedly discouraged purchases, and in July a Commerce Department official told Congress that actual H200 shipments had been “trivial” against roughly $10 billion of licences. Every dollar of China data-centre revenue is now upside to the forecast rather than part of it.
What’s driving it
Almost all of the growth came from data centres: $89.0 billion of the $96.2 billion total. The buyers are the cloud providers and AI labs building capacity for training and serving models. The quarter also came before Vera Rubin, Nvidia’s next platform, which it said in June would begin shipping this autumn.
Why it matters
For developers, Nvidia’s numbers are a leading indicator of compute supply. Revenue at this scale means more GPUs reaching cloud providers, which over time means more capacity, more model releases and, eventually, pressure on inference prices. A month later Nvidia added a record $150 billion to its buyback authorisation, taking the remaining total to $235 billion, a sign of how much cash the AI build-out is generating for it.
Sources
- Nvidia: Financial results for second quarter fiscal 2027 (Aug 26, 2026)
- Nvidia: Financial results for first quarter fiscal 2027 (May 20, 2026)
- Reuters via BNN Bloomberg: Nvidia boosts share buyback by record US$150B (Sep 28, 2026)
We link every claim to the reporting or official statement it comes from. Where a detail rests on one outlet’s reporting, we say so. Spotted an error? Reply to any newsletter and we’ll correct it.