Level 1 — Absolute Beginner

Nvidia is a big computer company. It makes chips. The chips help with AI. Today is a big day for Nvidia. The company will share its money news. People around the world are watching.

Nvidia will share its news after the stock market closes. Many people think the news will be good. They think Nvidia sold a lot of chips. The chips are very popular.

Banks expect Nvidia to make about 79 billion dollars in three months. That is a huge number. Most of the money comes from big data centers. Data centers run AI for many companies.

The boss of Nvidia is Jensen Huang. He likes black leather jackets. He talks about the next chip. The next chip is called Blackwell. Many companies want it for AI.

company

A group that makes or sells things to earn money.

chip

A small piece inside a computer that does math fast.

AI

Smart computer programs that can talk, draw, and learn.

stock market

A place where people buy and sell parts of companies.

billion

A very big number with nine zeros.

data center

A building full of computers that work for the internet.

boss

The main leader of a company.

popular

Many people want it.

Level 2 — Elementary

Nvidia will release its earnings on Wednesday, May 20, after the United States stock market closes. Earnings are the report that shows how much money a company made and how it spent it. Many people will watch this report because Nvidia has become a very important company for artificial intelligence.

Wall Street analysts expect Nvidia to report about 78.8 billion dollars in sales for the quarter. That is much more than the same quarter one year ago. The data-center business, which sells chips to cloud companies and AI labs, is expected to bring in about 73 billion dollars by itself.

Nvidia also makes a new chip family called Blackwell. Investors want to hear that Blackwell is shipping in large numbers. They want to know if customers are happy with it. They also want to know how Nvidia plans to handle the United States export rules that block sales of some chips to China.

The chief executive of Nvidia is Jensen Huang. He is a famous figure in the technology industry. After the report, he will speak to investors on a phone call. They will listen carefully to his guidance for the next quarter, which Wall Street currently expects to be around 86 billion dollars in sales.

earnings

A company's report of profits, sales, and spending over three months.

analyst

A person whose job is to study companies and predict their numbers.

data center

A large building filled with computer servers that run the cloud.

cloud

Internet services that run on shared computers far away from the user.

ship

To send a product out to customers.

export rules

Government laws that control what products may be sold to foreign countries.

investor

A person or institution that owns part of a company and wants it to grow.

guidance

A company's forecast of how it expects to do in the next quarter or year.

Level 3 — Intermediate

Nvidia is set to report fiscal first-quarter results on Wednesday, May 20, in what many analysts are calling the most important earnings print of the year. Visible Alpha's consensus puts revenue at roughly 78.8 billion dollars, a year-over-year jump of about 79 percent, with adjusted earnings per share around 1.77 dollars. Data-center sales, the heart of the company's growth story, are forecast at about 73 billion dollars on their own, dwarfing the gaming and automotive segments.

The headline numbers, however, may matter less than the qualitative commentary. Investors want a confident read on the Blackwell ramp, especially how quickly hyperscalers like Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Oracle Cloud are receiving B200 and GB200 systems. They also want a candid update on the H20 and H200-export pause to China, where Nvidia has been forced to abandon billions in pipeline revenue under new United States export rules.

A second cluster of questions surrounds sovereign AI deals. Nvidia has announced massive infrastructure agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and several European governments, and Wall Street wants to know whether those contracts will begin to show in this quarter's bookings or remain second-half catalysts. Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider is forecasting a roughly 2-billion-dollar beat over consensus, and prediction markets on Polymarket give the company a 90 percent probability of beating the headline.

Despite the bullishness, the stock has fallen on four of the last five earnings beats, a reminder that expectations have been pulled forward sharply. The hour-long conference call with chief executive Jensen Huang and chief financial officer Colette Kress will likely matter more than the press release. Analysts will be parsing every clause of Q2 guidance for hints about gross-margin trajectory, supply constraints, and the durability of the AI capital-expenditure cycle now powering large swaths of the S&P 500.

consensus

The average forecast Wall Street analysts publish for a number such as revenue or earnings.

year-over-year

A comparison between a recent period and the same period one year earlier.

hyperscaler

A very large cloud company that operates massive data centers, such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, or Oracle.

ramp

The fast scaling up of production for a new product after launch.

pipeline

Future business deals or revenue that a company expects but has not yet booked.

sovereign AI

AI infrastructure that a national government builds and controls inside its own borders.

catalyst

An event or piece of news that drives a stock price up or down.

capital expenditure

Money a company spends on long-lived assets such as buildings, machines, and chips.

Level 4 — Advanced

Nvidia walks into Wednesday's print as the most consequential single line item on the Q1 calendar, a status the company has now held for six consecutive quarters. Visible Alpha consensus calls for revenue of 78.8 billion dollars, a 79 percent year-over-year acceleration, with adjusted earnings per share of 1.77 dollars and gross margins in the high seventies. Data center remains the dominant pillar, projected at about 73 billion dollars, while gaming, professional visualization, automotive, and OEM segments together account for the remaining single-digit-billion balance. Goldman Sachs analyst James Schneider has flagged a potential 2-billion-dollar beat over consensus, and Polymarket assigns a ninety percent probability to a top-line surprise.

The qualitative subtext is where the meaningful capital will be allocated. Sell-side desks are particularly fixated on three vectors: the slope of the Blackwell ramp into B200 and GB200 systems shipped to hyperscalers; the magnitude of the China revenue void created by the H20 and H200 export pause, which several analysts estimate at 8 to 12 billion dollars annualized; and the conversion timeline for sovereign AI deals signed with the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, India, and the United Kingdom. Management has previously characterized these contracts as multi-year, but investors want to see the first dollar of sovereign-AI revenue actually book this quarter.

A more technical concern lurks beneath the surface: the trajectory of gross margins as Blackwell-class systems carry richer system-level content such as NVLink switches, ConnectX-8 SuperNICs, and CoolerMaster liquid-cooling assemblies. These ancillary components dilute pure-silicon gross margin even as they expand the dollar value per rack. Colette Kress, the chief financial officer, has signaled that gross margin should normalize in the mid-seventies through fiscal 2027, but a hotter-than-expected deceleration could pressure the multiple even on a clean revenue beat.

Finally, the conference call will be parsed for any hint about the AI capex cycle's durability. The four largest United States hyperscalers have collectively guided to more than 320 billion dollars of capital expenditure in 2026, with the marginal incremental dollar overwhelmingly tilted toward AI accelerators, networking, and power infrastructure. Any softening of language from Jensen Huang on the visibility of 2027 and 2028 demand would ricochet through the entire semiconductor complex and through utilities, pure-play data-center REITs, and the recently re-rated nuclear-and-gas power names that have priced in years of AI-driven load growth.

print

Trader shorthand for the moment a company's quarterly results are published.

sell-side

Wall Street research desks at banks and brokerage firms that publish forecasts for fund managers.

vector

An axis along which a trend, risk, or opportunity moves.