The current date is February 26, 2026. Nvidia just put out what might be the most amazing quarterly report in tech history, but its stock price went down in after-hours trading.
Nvidia has another bad quarter, but Wall Street's excitement about AI is starting to fade. That one number sums up the state of the artificial intelligence boom in early 2026: investors are no longer willing to cheer on the technology without thinking about it, even though the numbers are still huge and the demand is still out of control.
"AI is here, and it's not going back.
Nvidia made $68.1 billion in revenue in the last three months of its fiscal year, which ended in January. This was a 73% increase from the same time last year.
Record Quarter and Skyrocketing Demand
Nvidia made $68.1 billion in revenue in the last three months of its fiscal year, which ended in January. This was a 73% increase from the same time last year. The profit almost doubled, going from $43 billion to $1.76 per share. Both numbers broke the already very high predictions that analysts had been making for weeks.
CEO Jensen Huang didn't hold back on the conference call when he said, "AI is here, and it's not going back." From here on out, AI will only get better. He stuck to his long-held belief that we are only at the beginning of a computing revolution that will change every industry. He called the demand for the company's Blackwell chips "skyrocketing."
The forward guidance was just as strong. Nvidia told Wall Street to expect sales of between $77 billion and $80 billion from February to April, which is a 77% increase from the same time last year. If this company reached the upper end, it would see another growth boost.
It is already the fastest-growing large-cap stock in the history of the modern market. Three years ago, Nvidia's market cap was about $400 billion. Right now, it's almost $4.8 trillion.
There is no mistake. The company has added more than $4 trillion in value since the generative AI wave began to take off in late 2022. It was briefly the most valuable public company in the world.
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Why the Stock Dropped Despite Blowout Numbers
So why isn't the stock going up? because the bar is moving up to the stratosphere. Investors are used to Nvidia not only beating predictions but also blowing them away, often by double-digit margins.
When the business "only" passes the bar, even by a large margin, the response is either quiet or completely negative. That happened again on Wednesday night: right after the numbers came out, shares rose 4% in extended trading, but they lost all of their gains and fell a little before Huang's call ended.
After the last quarter's blowout, the same pattern was seen: great results were followed by a 3% drop the next day.
"This quarter has more riding on it than any other," said Jake Behan, head of capital markets at Direxion. Nvidia's earnings report gave the AI trade a lot of good news that it needed. But he also saw that people on the Street were getting more and more worried.
Many people are starting to ask themselves, "Is this sustainable, or are we building castles on sand?"
Shifting Investor Questions on AI Value
People in the investment world are now asking, "How much of this spending is actually useful?" instead of "Will AI happen?"
The four biggest cloud providers have promised to spend about $650 billion on capital projects by 2026. Most of this money will go toward building AI infrastructure that needs a lot of GPUs.
Nvidia's H100, H200, and now Blackwell processors are still the best in the business for training and running big language models. This makes Nvidia the clear market leader.
Critics say that many of the AI applications being worked on right now are still in the testing stage and are either chatbots for consumers or tools for improving internal efficiency, so it's hard to tell how much money they will make.
Analysts say that the company's revenue, which was recently reported to be $216 billion, will rise by more than 50% to over $330 billion in the next fiscal year.
Geopolitics and Unstoppable Momentum
China is also a big part of everything. Export limits have made it harder for Nvidia to sell its most expensive chips in the second-largest economy in the world, but the company keeps finding ways to report record quarters.
Huang has been careful not to talk too much about geopolitics on calls, but the high demand from outside of China shows that the rest of the world, especially the hyperscalers in the US, is more than making up for it.
At this point, it looks like the momentum can't be stopped. Huang said in his last comments on Wednesday, "We want to take the great opportunity that we have as we're in the beginning of this new computing era, this new computing platform shift, to put everybody on Nvidia."
That kind of hope has worked out well for three years in a row.
If the trillions being spent on AI infrastructure start to show clear, measurable economic benefits, or if investors think the party has gone on long enough, it will go on until 2026.
Spectacular Now the Minimum
Nvidia's results for the fourth quarter of its fiscal year were definitely great. In today's market, though, spectacular is now just the bare minimum.
It can be disappointing to have anything less than perfect.
Every big hyperscaler, like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta, is spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centers. A lot of that money is still going straight to Nvidia.
This year marks continued dominance for Nvidia in the AI chip space despite emerging questions on long-term returns.
The AI boom continues to drive unprecedented growth, but investor caution reflects a maturing phase where results must justify valuations.
Benjamin Hayes
Business Journalist
Benjamin Hayes is a seasoned business journalist with a special focus on corporate finance, global markets, and entrepreneurial trends. He has covered major startups, tech investments, and economic shifts in multiple sectors.
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