Nvidia’s $81.6 Billion Quarter Sparks a Fourth-Straight Selloff as Vera Rubin and $80 Billion Buyback Take Center Stage

Nvidia reports 85% revenue surge to $81.6B; stock dips on China export ban, unveils Vera Rubin platform and $80B buyback.

For the fourth consecutive quarter, Nvidia has delivered a set of numbers that would make most companies envious — only to see its share price slide. The chip giant reported first-quarter revenue of $81.6 billion for its fiscal 2027, an 85% surge from a year ago, and net profit more than tripled to $58.32 billion. Adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.87, beating analyst expectations, while diluted GAAP EPS hit $2.39 — a 211% leap in net income. Yet the stock opened roughly 2% lower in Frankfurt, trading at €190.10, some 5% below the 52-week high of €201.05. Year-to-date, the shares are still up 63%.

Behind the headline numbers lies a strategic recalibration. Nvidia has overhauled its reporting structure, splitting the data-center business into three segments: Hyperscale ($37.9 billion), AI-and-Enterprise Computing ($37.4 billion), and Edge Computing ($6.4 billion). Notably, networking revenue within the data center nearly tripled to $14.8 billion. The move reflects a deliberate shift away from pure reliance on the largest cloud providers — what the company calls hyperscalers — toward industrial customers, governments, and specialized AI factories, a market CEO Jensen Huang considers far larger in the long run.

The most immediate test, however, is the current quarter. Management guided for revenue of $91 billion, a level that would imply another year-over-year double. Yet the figure assumes zero sales from China in the data-center business. US export controls have already blocked shipments of Hopper chips to the country, a market that contributed $4.6 billion in the year-ago period. Huang acknowledged that Huawei has become “very, very strong” on its home turf and that Nvidia has “largely given up” the Chinese market.

To compensate for the lost growth vector, the company is betting heavily on the next architectural cycle. Huang unveiled the Vera Rubin platform, combining a new Vera CPU with the Rubin GPU, scheduled to launch in the second half of 2026. The Vera CPU alone targets an addressable market of $200 billion, and Nvidia expects to generate roughly $20 billion in CPU revenue by end-2026 — a significant departure from its GPU-centric history. The company sees supply constraints persisting through the entire Vera Rubin cycle, citing “parabolic” demand.

Confidence in the roadmap is matched by a massive capital-return program. The board approved an 80-billion-dollar share buyback, on top of $38.5 billion still remaining from prior authorizations, and lifted the quarterly dividend from one cent to 25 cents per share — a 2,400% increase payable on June 26. William Blair analyst Sebastien Naji noted that the higher payout opens the door for income-oriented funds, enabled by the company’s strong cash generation.

The market’s skepticism hasn’t deterred sell-side analysts. UBS’s Timothy Arcuri raised his price target to $275 from $245, reiterating a Buy rating, while analysts at Argus, Needham and RBC lifted their targets to $270, citing the strength of the data-center franchise and the coming Vera Rubin cycle. Nvidia’s forward price-to-earnings multiple of 23 times also looks cheap relative to AMD’s 47 times, though competition from AMD, Broadcom, and Google is intensifying.

Yet the sheer scale of Nvidia’s investment in its own future is evident in its purchase and production commitments, which rose to $119 billion in the second quarter from $95.2 billion in the prior period. For a company already on track to capture more than a third of global semiconductor revenue this year, the message is clear: the AI infrastructure buildout is far from over.