Nvidia delivered another blockbuster quarter on Wednesday, underscoring how the artificial intelligence boom continues to reshape the global technology industry, even as the chip giant signaled that the pace of growth may begin to moderate after two years of explosive expansion.

The company reported revenue of $81.6 billion for the quarter ended April 26, up 20% from the prior quarter, while data center revenue climbed to a record $75.2 billion, reinforcing Nvidia’s dominant position at the center of the AI infrastructure race.

The results further cement Nvidia’s status as the primary supplier powering the generative AI economy, with demand from hyperscalers, cloud providers, and AI model developers continuing to surge as companies race to expand computing capacity.

“Our Blackwell architecture is everywhere, adopted and deployed by every major hyperscaler, every cloud provider, and every major model maker,” Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said.

The earnings report also revealed how aggressively Nvidia is positioning itself financially and strategically for the next phase of AI expansion. Alongside the results, the company authorized a massive $80 billion share repurchase program, one of the largest buyback authorizations in corporate America, signaling management’s confidence in sustained long-term cash generation.

The scale of the buyback highlights the extraordinary profitability Nvidia has achieved from the AI boom. Few companies in history have generated revenue growth at the pace Nvidia has posted over the last two years, fueled largely by demand for its advanced graphics processing units used to train and operate large AI models.

Yet beneath the headline numbers, the report also pointed to important shifts in the market.

Nvidia projected revenue of $91 billion for the next quarter, representing growth of roughly 12%, a notable slowdown compared with the hypergrowth rates investors have become accustomed to since the generative AI boom began.

The moderation is seen as an indication that the company may be entering a more mature phase of the AI infrastructure cycle, where growth remains enormous in absolute dollar terms but becomes harder to sustain at the pace seen over the past two years. Even so, the figures remain staggering by industry standards. Nvidia’s quarterly revenue now exceeds the annual sales of many global semiconductor firms.

The earnings also provided fresh insight into Nvidia’s expanding influence beyond chips alone. One of the biggest surprises in the filing was the rapid growth of the company’s private investment portfolio.

Nvidia disclosed that its holdings in privately owned companies, categorized as “non-marketable equity securities,” surged from $22 billion in January to $43 billion by April. The increase was driven largely by $18.5 billion in new investments during the quarter, compared with just $649 million in equivalent purchases in the prior quarter.

The figures do not include Nvidia’s recent investments in public companies such as Corning and IREN, nor its previously announced commitment to invest $30 billion in OpenAI earlier this year.

That growing web of investments has drawn increased attention from investors and regulators who are closely watching how deeply Nvidia is embedding itself across the AI ecosystem, including cloud providers, model developers, and infrastructure firms.

The company’s strategy increasingly resembles a vertically integrated AI empire spanning chips, networking, software, cloud infrastructure, and strategic equity stakes.

During the earnings call, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted the company’s expanding partnership with Anthropic, one of OpenAI’s biggest competitors.

“The amount of capacity we’re going to bring online for Anthropic this year and next year is going to be quite significant,” Huang told investors. “Our coverage for Anthropic had been largely zero until this.”

The comments come amid intensifying competition among AI labs to secure computing power as training costs continue to soar. Nvidia’s latest Blackwell chips are at the center of that race, with major AI developers competing for supply.

The company also indicated that China remains a limited contributor to current growth despite recent approvals involving exports of H200 chips. Kress said Nvidia had not yet generated meaningful revenue from those exports and warned that uncertainty remains over whether broader imports into China will ultimately be permitted.

That underscores the ongoing geopolitical risks hanging over the semiconductor industry as Washington continues tightening export restrictions aimed at limiting China’s access to advanced AI computing technologies. The restrictions have forced Chinese technology firms to accelerate efforts to develop domestic alternatives while prompting U.S. chipmakers to restructure supply chains and sales strategies.

Still, Nvidia’s latest results show that global AI demand remains strong enough to offset much of the China-related pressure for now. The company’s dominance has also reshaped capital spending priorities across the technology sector. Hyperscalers, including Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, are collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars annually on AI infrastructure, much of it flowing directly into Nvidia’s ecosystem.

At the same time, AI startups and model developers are racing to secure access to Nvidia hardware amid fears that compute scarcity could become a competitive bottleneck.