Nvidia Sends a Powerful Signal: Rating Upgrade, 25x Dividend Increase, and a $10 Billion Infrastructure Alliance

Nvidia flexes financial muscle with S&P AA upgrade, 25-fold dividend hike, $80B buybacks, and a $10B joint venture to tackle AI power and data center bottlenecks.

The chipmaker is making it abundantly clear that its confidence in the AI boom is backed by hard cash. Less than a week before its annual shareholder meeting, Nvidia has unveiled a trifecta of moves — a rare credit-rating upgrade, a dividend hike that multiplies the quarterly payout by 25, and a multi-billion-dollar joint venture designed to tackle the biggest bottleneck in artificial intelligence: power and data centre capacity.

S&P Global raised Nvidia’s credit rating to “AA”, citing an insatiable demand for AI systems. The agency expects revenue to hit $394 billion in fiscal 2027 and $544 billion the following year — a projection that rests on Nvidia maintaining its technological lead. The one risk S&P flagged is the heavy reliance on contract manufacturer TSMC, warning that any capacity shortfall there could dent the company’s market dominance.

But the financial firepower on display this week suggests management is already preparing for the next stage of growth. Nvidia raised its quarterly dividend from a token $0.01 to $0.25 per share, payable on 26 June to shareholders of record as of 4 June. That is a 25-fold increase. On top of that, the board authorised an additional $80 billion in share buybacks in May, with no expiration date. In the first quarter alone, the company returned roughly $20 billion to shareholders.

Those distributions are backed by record-breaking numbers. For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Nvidia posted revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% year over year. Its data centre segment, the engine of the AI revolution, surged 92% to $75.2 billion. For the current quarter, the company expects revenue of around $91 billion — deliberately excluding China-related data centre sales. Looking back at fiscal 2026, full-year revenue came in at $215.9 billion, a 65% jump.

To keep that growth trajectory on track, Nvidia is also addressing the infrastructure bottleneck head-on. Together with KKR, the Kuwait Investment Authority, and energy giant Vistra, it has launched Helix Digital Infrastructure, a platform that pools more than $10 billion to build turnkey data centres for massive AI workloads. Helix will deliver servers, power, and network connectivity as a package, with Nvidia supplying its latest hardware architecture. The venture is led by Adam Selipsky, the former CEO of Amazon Web Services, who is tasked with navigating the severe power shortages that have been stalling US projects.

Meanwhile, CEO Jensen Huang has been extending his stay in South Korea, meeting with executives from LG, SK, Hyundai, Naver, and Doosan. The most notable outcome is a partnership with LG to build an AI factory focused on robotics, autonomous driving, and GPU cloud services. With Doosan, Nvidia is expanding into physical AI and robotics. Analysts see Huang’s prolonged presence as a signal that the company wants to build a complete AI ecosystem in Korea, moving beyond being just a chip supplier.

At the stock level, shares closed on Friday at €177.28, almost exactly on the 50-day moving average of €177.30. The relative strength index (RSI) stands at 45.6, indicating a neutral to slightly oversold position. The stock has gained roughly 42% over the past twelve months but remains about 12% below its all-time high from May. The forward price-to-earnings ratio hovers around 22, a notably tight range between 18 and 25 that has held since the start of the year — a consolidation that did not exist before the AI boom.

All eyes now turn to the annual general meeting on 24 June. Shareholders will vote on executive compensation, director elections, and four shareholder proposals, including one demanding greater transparency on greenhouse gas emissions from Nvidia products. The board has recommended rejecting all four. Management is expected to point to the record results as justification for maximum payouts, while reiterating its long-term thesis: global cloud providers are expected to spend $1 trillion on AI infrastructure by 2027, and Nvidia intends to capture every part of that opportunity.