Key Points
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Data center revenue reached $89.0 billion in the July quarter — 92.5% of Nvidia’s total revenue.
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The company guided fiscal third-quarter revenue to $108.0 billion, which puts the data center business within about $100 million of the milestone at the current mix.
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Nvidia’s fiscal 2027 ends in late January, giving that business two more quarters to get there.
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Nvidia’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) data center business booked $89.0 billion in revenue during the second quarter of fiscal 2027 (the period ended July 26). That was 117% higher than a year earlier, and up 18% from the prior quarter. In 13 weeks, that one business brought in more than the entire company did in any quarter before this fiscal year.
Here’s my prediction: before fiscal 2027 closes in late January, the data center business clears $100 billion in a single quarter.
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That is not a bold call about demand. It’s mostly math on numbers Nvidia has already published. And the outcome is closer than the growth rates suggest.
Image source: Getty Images.
A rising share of a rising total
Two things have to hold for the milestone to arrive. Total revenue has to land near Nvidia’s guidance, and the data center business has to keep its share of the total. Both have been moving in one direction.
A year ago, in the second quarter of fiscal 2026, data center revenue was 87.9% of Nvidia’s total. The share rose to 89.8% the next quarter, then 91.5%, then 92.2%, then 92.5% in the quarter just reported.
So its share has risen every quarter for a year, though each step has been smaller than the last. The artificial intelligence build-out simply swamped everything else Nvidia sells.
The rest of the company is not shrinking, to be sure. Edge computing revenue (everything Nvidia sells outside the data center, from workstations to automotive) rose 27% from the year-ago period. Data center just grew more than four times faster.
Does the October quarter get there?
Nvidia’s guidance for the fiscal third quarter calls for total revenue of $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%. Hold the data center mix at last quarter’s 92.5%, and data center revenue works out to $99.9 billion — about $100 million short of the line.
So the October quarter comes down to a rounding error. For the business to clear $100 billion this quarter, its share of revenue needs to tick up to just 92.6%, a smaller step than it has taken in any of the past four quarters. One more quarter of the same drift gets there.
Notably, the guidance assumes zero data center compute revenue from China. Any licensed shipments there would be upside, supply permitting.
And Vera Rubin, the company’s next-generation platform, began production shipments in August. Management expects it to account for about 20% of data center revenue in the current quarter — new supply arriving inside the business, one more reason the mix should hold.
I’d still treat October as too close to call. Guidance is a midpoint, not a floor, and a result at the bottom of the guided range would leave it near $98 billion even at a richer mix.
January settles it
The fourth quarter is where the prediction stops being close. Nvidia has a record of beating its own numbers — the July quarter’s $96.2 billion came in more than $3 billion above the top of the guided range. And the company said growth in its hyperscale business (sales to the giant cloud computing providers and the biggest consumer internet companies) should reaccelerate in the fiscal fourth quarter as Vera Rubin supply builds.
Even if revenue merely held flat at $108 billion, one more small step in mix pushes the business past $100 billion. After all, for the milestone to slip past January, that yearlong climb would have to stall out entirely, just as the company’s newest platform ramp lands squarely inside it.
Could that happen?
Of course. A supply disruption or a demand shock could do it, and a company guiding to 89% year-over-year growth carries plenty of ways to surprise. But nothing in the company’s published numbers points that way.
So my prediction stands. The January quarter likely clears $100 billion comfortably, and the October quarter has a decent shot at getting there first. Either way, a single business line is about to produce more revenue in a single quarter than the vast majority of S&P 500 companies produce in a year. That scale, not any one quarter’s milestone, is what investors are paying for when they buy this stock. And to me, it remains the strongest growth engine the market has to offer, for now.
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Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
