The numbers are staggering, but for Nvidia, they’re becoming routine. As the chip giant prepares to unveil its first-quarter earnings on May 20, the story is no longer just about graphics cards powering data centers. It’s about a company remaking itself into the backbone of enterprise AI — and spending billions to ensure the physical infrastructure can keep up.
A New Partnership Targets the Desktop
Nvidia is pushing deeper into corporate software territory. A fresh collaboration with ServiceNow, unveiled at the Knowledge 2026 conference in Las Vegas, centers on “Project Arc” — an autonomous desktop agent designed to handle complex workflows across IT, customer service, and operations. The agent runs on Nvidia’s OpenShell Runtime, a secure execution environment for AI agents, and is managed through ServiceNow’s AI Control Tower.
The move signals a strategic shift. Nvidia is no longer content selling chips to cloud providers; it wants to embed its technology directly into the software layer that enterprises use daily. ServiceNow is integrating the AI Control Tower into Nvidia’s Enterprise AI Factory, extending governance capabilities to large model workloads running in corporate data centers.
The $725 Billion Customer Bonanza
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The broader picture is even more dramatic. For 2026, the major cloud players have penciled in combined capital expenditures of roughly $725 billion. Microsoft alone plans $190 billion in investments, while Meta has raised its ceiling to $145 billion. Those numbers are already feeding through to Nvidia’s order book, and analysts suspect current revenue estimates are too conservative. Wall Street is looking for Q2 fiscal 2027 revenue of $86.6 billion — a figure that could prove low if the spending spree continues.
Earnings Expectations and the Vera-Rubin Catalyst
For the first quarter ending in April, analysts project revenue of $78.8 billion, a 79 percent jump from a year ago. Earnings per share are seen hitting $1.77, more than double the prior-year figure. The bar is high: some analysts say revenue growth above 80 percent could trigger another leg higher for the stock.
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Beyond the numbers, CEO Jensen Huang is expected to provide an update on the Vera-Rubin platform, whose shipments begin in the second half of the year. That next-generation architecture will be critical to sustaining Nvidia’s technological lead as competitors crowd the market.
Betting on Glass, Not Just Silicon
Nvidia isn’t just selling chips — it’s securing the supply chain that makes them useful. The company is investing up to $2.7 billion in Corning, the glass manufacturer, to build three new factories in the United States. The goal: replace traditional copper cables with fiber optics in AI data centers, boosting data speeds while slashing power consumption.
The move addresses a growing bottleneck. As AI models grow larger, the energy and bandwidth demands of interconnecting thousands of chips have become a major constraint. Fiber optics offer a path forward, and Nvidia is betting billions that the technology will be essential to the next generation of AI infrastructure.
The China Problem That Won’t Go Away
For all the bullishness, a structural risk remains. US export controls have effectively locked Nvidia out of the Chinese market for advanced AI accelerators. Huang has stated that Nvidia’s market share for AI chips in China is now zero — a dramatic reversal from two years ago when the company dominated. The guidance for the current quarter already assumes zero data center revenue from China.
That void hasn’t dented the stock’s momentum. Trading near €181, the shares have gained roughly 74 percent over the past twelve months and sit comfortably above all major moving averages. Rosenblatt sees a price target of $325, while Bernstein and Cantor Fitzgerald both target $300.
The May 20 Inflection Point
When Nvidia reports on May 20, the market will be watching for more than just the headline numbers. The guidance for the rest of the fiscal year will set the tone for the entire semiconductor sector. With $725 billion in customer spending on the horizon, a new software push into enterprise desktops, and a $2.7 billion bet on fiber optics, Nvidia is playing a game that few competitors can match — even as it navigates the geopolitical headwinds that come with being the most important company in AI.
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