That guidance mattered more than the beat itself. Nvidia has now topped sales estimates for 13 straight quarters, and the latest forecast said demand is still moving faster than Wall Street had modeled, Reuters reported. For a stock that had risen just about 2% so far in 2026 before the report, that was enough to shake some life back into it, Reuters reported.

The post-earnings call also showed the market is no longer willing to treat strong results as a complete answer. UBS analyst Tim Arcuri asked whether Nvidia was considering returning some of the roughly $100 billion it was likely to generate in cash this year, saying the stock had barely moved despite the performance, Reuters reported. That is the sort of question that comes up when a stock has to work harder for every extra point.

Wall Street still looks broadly constructive. Of the 82 analysts covering Nvidia, 76 have buy ratings, and the average target implies 37% upside, which would push the company’s market value over $6 trillion if it came through, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago). That is not a vote of disbelief.

The cleaner explanation for Nvidia’s resilience is that its customers are still spending like the AI buildout has not hit a wall. Hyperscalers including Meta Platforms have forecast total capital expenditure of at least $630 billion in 2026, with most of that money earmarked for data centers and processors, Reuters reported. Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta alone are projected to spend more than $400 billion this year, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago).

That spending helps explain why Nvidia’s pipeline still looks enormous. In January, executives said they were discussing data-center orders for next year with customers, and analysts later estimated that Blackwell and early Rubin orders over the next five quarters implied more than $340 billion in revenue, Morningstar reported. Ben Reitzes of Melius Research called the update a “home run,” Morningstar reported.

There has also been some hard commercial news behind the optimism. Nvidia last week agreed to sell millions of chips to Meta, though it did not disclose the value of the deal, Reuters reported. Reuters also reported a roughly $20 billion licensing deal with Groq, which analysts said could strengthen Nvidia’s position in the inference market, Reuters reported. That does not settle the valuation debate, but it does help explain why buyers are still willing to lean on the stock.

The risks are still real, and they are getting less polite. Nvidia remains the premier producer of AI accelerators, with more than 90% market share, but its four biggest customers, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft, together account for more than 40% of revenue and are building their own chips to reduce dependence on Nvidia hardware that can cost more than $30,000 apiece, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago). AMD has also won major data-center orders from OpenAI and Oracle, and its data-center revenue is projected to rise about 60% to almost $26 billion in 2026, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago).

Margins are another pressure point. Nvidia’s gross margin was in the mid-70s in fiscal 2024 and 2025, but it dipped in fiscal 2026 as Blackwell ramp-up costs weighed on profitability, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago). The figure is projected to be 71.2% in fiscal 2026, and Nvidia says it will climb back to around 75% in fiscal 2027, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago). That is a recovery story, but not a smooth one.

Supply is the most immediate brake. The biggest constraint on growth could be bottlenecks at TSMC’s 3-nanometer assembly lines, and analysts said before February’s report that it was hard to see much upside beyond guidance in light of that capacity limit, Reuters reported. In plain English, the market may want more chips faster than the system can physically produce them.

China remains the wildcard hanging over the forecast. Nvidia said its current-quarter outlook did not include any expected revenue from sales of data-center chips to China, Reuters reported. It also said it had received licenses this month from the U.S. government to ship “small amounts” of H200 chips to customers there, Reuters reported. Any broader reopening would be upside not yet in the numbers.

The scale of Nvidia’s valuation is still hard to overstate, which is part of the point. A $5 trillion market cap is larger than the combined market values of Broadcom, TSMC, AMD, ASML, Micron, Lam Research, Qualcomm, Intel and Arm, Morningstar reported. It also exceeds the 2024 gross domestic products of every country except the U.S. and China, Morningstar reported.

The stock’s influence stretches well beyond people who own it directly. Since the bull market began in October 2022, Nvidia has accounted for roughly 16% of the S&P 500’s advance, while Apple is responsible for around 7%, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago). When Nvidia moves, the rest of the market feels the draft.

For now, the stock sits in a familiar place: enormous growth, fierce competition, and expectations that leave very little room for sloppiness. At 25 times profit expected over the next 12 months, Nvidia trades at a discount to all of the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks except Meta, the Financial Post reported (three and a half months ago). Bulls see that as evidence the story still has room to run. Skeptics see a company that has to keep being excellent just to hold the line.

The next test is whether Nvidia can keep delivering while customers build alternatives, margins normalize and China stays outside the forecast. If the stock gets back to a record close, it will be because investors decided those risks are manageable for now. That judgment will need fresh earnings to survive.