Nvidia Posts $120bn Annual Profit as Data Center Revenue Surges 75%

Nvidia Posts $120bn Annual Profit as Data Center Revenue Surges 75%

Nvidia extended its remarkable streak of beating Wall Street expectations on Wednesday, reporting quarterly results that suggest the chipmaker remains insulated from growing concerns about an AI investment bubble—at least for now.

The company, currently the world's most valuable publicly traded firm, posted $120 billion in total profit for its fiscal year, driven almost entirely by its data center business. That division, which supplies the processing units powering most AI infrastructure, grew 75% year-over-year to $62.3 billion in quarterly revenue.

For finance leaders watching capital allocation trends, Nvidia's results offer a window into where tech spending is actually flowing. The "vast majority" of Nvidia's revenue now comes from data center sales, according to the company's Wednesday disclosure—a concentration that makes the chipmaker both a beneficiary and a barometer of corporate AI investment.

"Our customers are racing to invest in AI compute—the factories powering the AI industrial revolution and their future growth," CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement accompanying the earnings.

The results mark another quarter in what has become a multi-year pattern: Nvidia sets guidance, Wall Street raises expectations, and the company beats them anyway. The chipmaker has now surpassed analyst forecasts "every quarter for multiple years," according to the earnings report.

That consistency matters because Nvidia has become something of a proxy for the health of AI spending. When hyperscalers like Microsoft, Google, and Amazon commit to building out AI infrastructure, they're largely buying Nvidia chips. When those commitments slow, Nvidia will feel it first.

So far, there's no sign of a slowdown. The 75% year-over-year growth in data center revenue suggests enterprise AI budgets are still expanding, not contracting. For CFOs evaluating their own AI investments, that's either reassuring validation or a reminder that everyone else is still spending aggressively.

The question hanging over these results—and over every Nvidia earnings report lately—is how long this can continue. At some point, the infrastructure gets built. At some point, companies need to show returns on these investments, not just more capex commitments. Nvidia's dominance of the chip market means it will likely be the last to feel any pullback, but it also means the company has the most to lose if AI spending patterns shift.

For now, though, the data suggests the boom is still booming. Whether that's immunity to bubble fears or just a very well-positioned company riding the wave before it breaks—well, that's the question every finance leader is trying to answer about their own AI bets.