NVIDIA Q4 2026 earnings preview: AI strategy in focus

When will NVIDIA report its latest earnings?

NVIDIA is set to report its fourth quarter (Q4) fiscal year (FY) 2026 earnings on Wednesday, 25 February 2026, after the market closes.

Company backdrop

NVIDIA's third quarter (Q3) FY 2026 earnings, released on 19 November 2025, highlighted the company’s sustained leadership in the artificial intelligence (AI) chip market. This achievement comes despite mounting geopolitical challenges. Building on its explosive growth trajectory, NVIDIA surpassed Wall Street forecasts for both revenue and earnings per share (EPS). The driving force behind NVIDIA’s performance is its Blackwell architecture, which chief executive officer (CEO) Jensen Huang praised for its rapid sales and strong demand in cloud graphics processing units (GPUs).

'Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,' said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. 'Compute demand keeps accelerating and compounding across training and inference - each growing exponentially. We’ve entered the virtuous cycle of AI. The AI ecosystem is scaling fast - with more new foundation model makers, more AI startups, across more industries, and in more countries. AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once.'

Despite solid results, NVIDIA's stock declined 3.15% the next day to $180.64. The drop reflected profit-taking, broader technology sector fatigue over high valuations and AI bubble concerns, and a sense that the beat, while impressive, didn't exceed the unusually high standards set by previous quarters' explosive growth.

Q3 2026 financial highlights

NVIDIA's Q3 results showed robust year-on-year (YoY) and quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) gains, driven overwhelmingly by AI-related compute, networking, and data centre sales.

Key metrics included:

• Revenue: $57 billion, exceeding estimates of around $54.9 billion - $55.4 billion. This marked a 62% YoY increase from $35.1 billion, with a strong 22% sequential jump from Q2
• EPS: EPS of $1.30, beating the consensus forecast of around $1.23 - $1.26, up 60% YoY
• Net income: Generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) net income of approximately $31.9 billion (up 65% YoY); non-GAAP at $31.8 billion (up 59% YoY)
• Gross margins: 73.4% GAAP and 73.6% non-GAAP

Segment breakdown:

• Data centre: A record $51.2 billion, up 66% YoY
• Gaming: $4.3 billion, up 30% YoY
• Professional visualisation: $760 million, up 56% YoY
• Automotive: $592 million, up 32% YoY

Summary of NVIDIA's Q3 FY 2026 results 

Q4 2026 key expectations and metrics

NVIDIA's Q4 guidance from its Q3 earnings

The market's expectations are outlined as follows:

• Revenue: $65.68 billion (up from $57 billion in Q3)
• EPS: $1.46 (up from $1.30 in Q3)
• Gross margins: 74.97% (up from 73.60% in Q3)
• Data centre revenue: $59.9 billion (up from $51.2 billion in Q3)
• Gaming revenues: $4.1 billion (down from $4.3 billion in Q3)

NVIDIA's data centre revenue chart

​Key areas to watch

AI infrastructure demand durability

Signals from hyperscalers (Meta, Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, etc.) will indicate multi-year capital expenditure (capex) commitments to GPU clusters versus any pivot to custom application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) or internal accelerators. Breadth of demand updates from enterprises, sovereign AI projects, vertical workloads, and non-Big 5 customers will show whether the AI boom is broadening.

Product cycle and roadmap execution

Look for fresh details on the Blackwell ramp (production scale and contributions), early Blackwell Ultra performance, and power and efficiency wins. Rubin architecture visibility is crucial for the second half (H2) calendar year (CY) 2026 ramp, ensuring smooth transitions without order pauses, while preserving pricing power and mid-70s margins.

Supply, lead times, and capacity planning

Watch current lead times for flagship accelerators, foundry/packaging ramp progress (e.g., TSMC/CoWoS). Assess if supply constraints still cap revenue upside or if easing bottlenecks shift the story toward normalised (but strong) growth.

Regulatory and export-control impacts

Latest updates on US export restrictions (high-end products to certain regions, especially China) should be watched, noting that no meaningful data centre revenue is assumed.

Competitive landscape

Management may discuss rivals (Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, hyperscaler custom silicon) and how NVIDIA's CUDA/software ecosystem continues to secure workloads. Framing competition as expanding the AI pie (more adoption overall) rather than share erosion will ease multi-year growth concerns.

Software, services, and recurring revenue

Expect updates on AI Enterprise/software monetisation, subscription-like streams, partnerships (e.g., OpenAI/Anthropic co-optimisation), and shifts toward a durable platform business for higher long-term margins and valuation.

Capital returns and balance sheet

Details on share repurchase updates (ongoing firepower as volatility buffer), dividend policy, and allocation priorities (R&D, capacity, potential mergers and acquisitions (M&A)) will be in focus.

Guidance for Q1 FY 2027

This could be the real mover; anything exceeding $75 billion - $76 billion (some bulls see higher) would signal sustained high growth.

Circular deals: fuelling growth or bubble risk?

One of the most debated aspects of NVIDIA’s recent surge is the role of circular AI deals - where cloud providers, model labs, and AI start-ups buy, sell, and rent GPU capacity to each other in a tight loop.

On the surface, this ecosystem appears self-reinforcing. Hyperscalers commit billions to NVIDIA GPUs, then create AI services sold to model builders, enterprises, and start-ups. These start-ups often raise capital to buy more GPU time, feeding demand back into the system. AI funding drives GPU orders, higher GPU orders validate high AI valuations, and those valuations in turn justify more funding.

Since Q3 FY 2026, however, the picture has become more nuanced. Higher funding costs and increased AI business model scrutiny have become a natural stress test, creating clearer separation between well-capitalised, scale players with tangible revenue prospects and smaller, speculative projects. NVIDIA has also highlighted a broader demand base: not just cloud giants and headline-grabbing start-ups, but also enterprises, sovereign AI initiatives, and industry-specific deployments in areas such as healthcare, automotive, and financial services.

The key question for Q4 FY 2026 is whether this demand mix is shifting from a capital markets-driven scramble for GPUs to a more durable, usage-driven infrastructure build-out. Evidence of multi-year contracts, diversified customer cohorts, and rising utilisation of deployed capacity would support the view that today’s elevated spending is funding real, long-lived AI workloads rather than a transient bubble. If growth still appears focused on aggressive AI players and resale-driven cloud offerings, concerns about circularity - and risk of a sharper correction if sentiment turns - will remain a concern for investors.

Is NVIDIA a buy or a sell?

NVIDIA has a TipRanks Smart Score of '7 neutral' and is rated as a 'strong buy' by analysts with 37 'buy', 1 'hold', and 1 'sell' recommendations as of 17 February 2026.

NVIDIA TipRanks Smart Score chart

NVIDIA technical analysis

NVIDIA’s share price has rallied an impressive 143% from its April 2025 low of $86.62 to a peak of $212.19 on 29 October 2025, before sliding into a correction that has persisted for three months.

So far, the pullback has held mostly above key support around the $170 level, reinforced by the 200-day moving average at $171.68. However, the pattern still resembles an incomplete three-wave 'abc' Elliott Wave correction, leaving open the possibility of one final leg lower toward the $150 zone to complete the correction.

A sustained break below support near $170 would indicate a dip toward $150 is underway. If clear signs of basing or reversal appear, this area should be watched closely as a potential buying opportunity on the dip.

Conversely, if NVIDIA’s share price jumps immediately after the earnings release and sustains a break above resistance at $195 - $197, it would confirm the correction is over and the primary uptrend has resumed.

NVIDIA daily candlestick chart