Nvidia’s $81.6 Billion Quarter: Agentic AI Takes Center Stage as China Business Disappears

Nvidia posts record $81.6B revenue and $80B buyback, but stock drops 8% from highs as China export controls block key market. Next-gen Vera Rubin platform aims to sustain AI dominance.

A curious disconnect is playing out at Nvidia. The chipmaker delivered what can only be described as a blowout quarter — record revenue, a massive buyback authorization, and a dividend increase that would turn heads in any other context. Yet the stock closed Friday at €185.46, down nearly 2% on the day and roughly 8% below its all-time high of €201.05 set just last week. The culprit? A geopolitical shadow that not even the strongest earnings can fully dispel.

The numbers leave little room for complaint. Revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 hit $81.6 billion, a 85% surge from a year earlier. Gross margin stood at roughly 75% on both a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. For the current quarter, management guided for $91 billion in sales — well above consensus estimates — with margins holding steady. The board approved an additional $80 billion stock buyback program and hiked the quarterly dividend tenfold to $0.25 per share from a penny. CEO Jensen Huang framed the moment as the start of the largest infrastructure expansion in human history, fueled by what he calls “agentic AI” — artificial intelligence capable of autonomously performing productive tasks across industries.

But the growth story has a glaring hole: China. In fiscal 2025, the country accounted for about 13% of total revenue, or roughly $17 billion. Today, that number for advanced AI chips is effectively zero, blocked by US export controls. Nvidia expects no data-center revenue from China in the current quarter. The tension escalated further when Taiwanese authorities last week arrested individuals allegedly using forged documents to smuggle AI chips into China, Hong Kong and Macao — a violation of US trade law. Speaking in Taipei over the weekend, Huang called on partners such as Super Micro Computer to tighten their compliance procedures. He still views China as a significant long-term market, one he estimates at $200 billion for CPUs and data centers, but near-term access remains firmly shut.

Nvidia is not waiting for the geopolitical fog to lift. Instead, it is betting on its next-generation “Vera Rubin” platform — a server architecture that includes a CPU purpose-built for agentic AI workloads. Huang has described it as potentially the largest product launch in the company’s history. The technology is designed to cement Nvidia’s dominance in an era where AI agents, not just chatbots, are driving demand. Analysts at William Blair remain constructive, pointing to sustained capital spending by big tech on AI hardware as the key growth driver.

The recent pullback, market observers say, looks more like profit-taking than a structural reversal. Since peaking in mid-May, the stock has shed about 8%, and the relative strength index has cooled to 40.5 — a sign of diminished momentum but not yet oversold territory. Over the past 12 months, shares are still up more than 57%. Near-term catalysts are on the horizon: management will present at the TD Cowen Technology Conference on May 28 and the BofA Global Technology Conference on June 4. Those appearances should offer institutional investors a clearer read on how the company is pricing in the China risk — and whether the Vera Rubin platform can carry the expectations Huang has loaded onto it.