Nvidia blew away markets with a phenomenal third quarter, earning a record $57 billion, up 62% year-over-year and well above expectations. Its data centre division alone delivered $51.2 billion, a 66% growth, while net income grew 65% to $32 billion. CEO Jensen Huang said Blackwell sales are “off the charts” and cloud GPUs are sold out, keeping the demand outlook for AI infrastructure intact. The company also guided for $65 billion in fourth-quarter revenue, exceeding forecasts and setting up for strong momentum into 2026.

What makes this earnings report stand out is the sheer magnitude of demand across the AI ecosystem, powering every step of the process. Nvidia highlighted infrastructure projects totalling 5 million GPUs spanning cloud providers, sovereign governments, AI labs, enterprises, and supercomputing centres. Major deployments from OpenAI and Anthropic show how deeply Nvidia hardware is embedded in real, revenue-generating applications, from recommendation engines to e-commerce optimisation, unlike the speculative spending of the dot-com era, although there have been alarmists pointing toward asset depreciation practice by these hyperscalers.

The results improved sentiment around the AI market and sustainability, offering hard evidence against fears of an overhyped bubble. Before the report, nearly half of fund managers saw an AI bubble as the top market risk, and Nvidia’s stock had slipped 8% on doubts about whether their AI investments would pay off. Huang pushed back with a clear argument: legacy computing must move to GPUs, new AI applications are just beginning, and agentic AI will require exponentially more compute to fill real productive demand. The market agreed, and shares jumped more than 4% after hours, boosting tech indices worldwide.

Sources: Reuters, CNBC, TechCrunch
Photos: Unsplash