NVIDIA Smashes Records as AI Boom Drives Historic Full-Year Revenue
NVIDIA has delivered its most profitable year in company history, reporting record quarterly revenue of $68.1 billion for the fourth fiscal quarter of 2026 — a 73% jump compared to the same period a year ago. For the full fiscal year, the chipmaker brought in $215.9 billion in total revenue, up 65% year over year, cementing its status as the dominant force behind the global AI infrastructure buildout. Looking ahead, the company is forecasting even stronger results, projecting Q1 fiscal 2027 revenue of approximately $78 billion.
Data Centre Demand Continues to Dominate
The engine behind Nvidia’s extraordinary growth remains its Data Centre segment, which generated $62.3 billion in quarterly revenue — up 22% from the prior quarter and 75% from a year ago. For the full fiscal year, Data Centre revenue reached $193.7 billion, a 68% increase from the prior year. These are the chips and computing systems that power AI model training and inference across major cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
NVIDIA’s Blackwell GPU platform, its latest generation of AI accelerators, has been central to this surge. The company also unveiled its next-generation Rubin platform during the quarter, which it says will deliver dramatically lower costs for running AI models than its current-generation hardware.
Beyond Data Centres: Gaming and Professional Visualisation Surge Too
While AI chips stole the headline, other parts of Nvidia’s business also had strong quarters. Gaming revenue came in at $3.7 billion for Q4, up 47% from a year earlier, though it dipped 13% from Q3 as post-holiday demand normalised. For the full year, Gaming revenue hit a record $16 billion, up 41%.
Professional Visualisation — the segment that powers high-end workstations used in design, architecture, and media production — delivered $1.3 billion in quarterly revenue, an impressive 159% year-over-year gain driven by exceptional demand for Blackwell-based hardware. Automotive revenue came in at $604 million for the quarter as adoption of Nvidia’s self-driving platforms continued to grow.
Earnings Per Share and Shareholder Returns
On a per-share basis, Nvidia reported GAAP earnings of $1.76 per diluted share for the quarter, nearly double the $0.89 reported a year ago. For the full fiscal year, GAAP earnings per diluted share reached $4.90, up 67% from the prior year.
The company was also generous with its shareholders throughout the year. NVIDIA returned $41.1 billion to investors through share buybacks and cash dividends during fiscal 2026. The company still has $58.5 billion remaining under its current share repurchase authorisation. A quarterly cash dividend of $0.01 per share is set to be paid on April 1, 2026, to shareholders of record as of March 11.
Strategic Partnerships Expand Nvidia’s Reach
During the quarter, Nvidia announced a series of high-profile partnerships that signal even deeper integration into the global AI ecosystem. The company entered a multiyear partnership with Meta for large-scale AI infrastructure, formed a new collaboration with Anthropic — which is scaling its Claude AI model on Microsoft Azure using Nvidia hardware — and reached a licensing agreement with Groq to accelerate AI inference at scale. It also deepened ties with CoreWeave, targeting more than 5 gigawatts of AI factory capacity by 2030.
Investors should keep a close eye on several key factors in the months ahead. First, Nvidia’s forward guidance of $78 billion for Q1 fiscal 2027 signals strong confidence, but the company has notably excluded any China Data Centre revenue from that outlook, reflecting ongoing uncertainty around export restrictions. Watch for any policy changes that could reopen or further restrict that market.
Second, the rollout of the Rubin platform will be a significant growth catalyst — or a potential source of margin pressure — as it transitions production and supply chains. Gross margins remain healthy above 75%, but any supply chain disruptions or production ramp-up challenges could weigh on profitability. Finally, monitor enterprise AI adoption trends; Nvidia’s CEO pointed to an “agentic AI inflection point,” suggesting corporate investment in AI agents could be the next major demand driver for Nvidia’s chips.
