The atmosphere in the tech market has become strangely heavy (which died down before the weather changed), and everyone seems to be waiting for Nvidia to break it. Over the past two weeks, stocks have fallen, nerves have frayed, and an artificial intelligence boom that once seemed invincible has suddenly become vulnerable. Nvidia's earnings on Wednesday for the third quarter of fiscal 2026 came as investors see the situation as a clearing storm: either the skies will open up again or the outlook will become much bleaker.
It's an odd position for a company to take, especially when it reports numbers on a scale as routine as an earnings calendar. But Nvidia hasn't been a normal company for a very long time. It has become the market facilitator for all AI development—a replacement for hyperscale capex, government spending, enterprise ambition, and investor psychology. If the AI cycle is the narrative of the moment, then Nvidia is the protagonist that investors keep returning to, wanting to see if the plot is still moving.
This tension colors everything that approaches the environment. Wall Street is expecting another strong quarter, with Zacks calling for revenue of about $54.6 billion, earnings per share of about $1.24, with overall revenue still growing rapidly and in the range of about 50% year over year, led by data centers. Nvidia forecast about $54 billion for the quarter. months agobarring any contribution from Chinese H20 chips, and no one has seriously floated the idea of Nvidia missing out. Instead, the Street tests the limits of its imagination, wondering if numbers this big can stay this big, and what it means if they can't.
What does the Street expect?
If the consensus looks too big, then the analyst models surrounding it look almost surreal.
Oppenheimer just raised target price to $265 (from $225) and targeted a $55 billion quarter, the kind of plan that most companies would present as a 10-year ambition. Their note focuses on the drivers: the move to the GB300 Ultra, growing demand for the NVL72 rackmount system, and what they call the “voracious appetite for artificial intelligence” among hyperscalers. They also recalled CEO Jensen Huang's forecast that Blackwell and Rubin could generate combined revenue of $500 billion by the end of 2026, serving a $4 trillion addressable market.
Wells Fargo reached the target of $265 (from $220), but went further in long-term calculations. They are now modeling revenue of $209 billion for FY26, $301 billion for FY27, and nearly $383 billion for FY28—growth curves that would have been considered fantasy a year ago. Their logic is that hyperscalers haven't slowed down, and until they do, Nvidia's numbers will still be too low.
Citi took a different tack, focusing on capital investment architecture. They now expect global spending on AI infrastructure to exceed $2.8 trillion by 2029, and by the end of 2026, hyperscalers will have committed nearly $490 billion in AI capex.
And then there's Gene Munster, whose optimism has its own gravitational force. He argues that Wall Street's 2026 estimates remain “too conservative,” noting that Blackwell and Rubin's returns could easily be 10% ahead of Wall Street's models, especially with sovereign AI programs involved in the trades.
Investors won't come next Wednesday to find out whether Nvidia can deliver a strong quarter. Wall Street is already modeling this. They tune in to see if the tone of the call—the nuance, the calibration, the underlined phrases—matches the boldness of those predictions. Nvidia has made a habit of confirming its own mythology. This quarter will prove that mythology can survive market fluctuations.
And yet the mood is different now than it was even a month ago. The Nasdaq fell, AI stocks lost billions, and analysts moved from outright optimism to something closer to cautious confidence. The street wants vision, but it also wants confidence. And Nvidia is at the center of all this controversy: the company is expected to restore confidence to the market, even as the market has begun to whisper its doubts. This means Nvidia is being counted on to publish another monster quarter and talk about a world where this momentum can continue.
Numbers that could move stocks
The problem with such a strong quarter is that the underlying results are almost meaningless. Nvidia could break $55 billion and still make investors nervous if the comment hints at controversy. And the friction is real.
Data center operators have begun to talk openly about capacity ceilings—not just in Asia or Europe, but also in key regions of the United States where network expansion is not keeping pace with demand. Connecting a gigawatt to the grid is an infrastructure project, not an engineering one. Recent earnings suggest big tech companies became a Great Power. Hyperscalers have already begun a phased rollout to ensure availability. Goldman Sachs estimates that global electricity demand from data centers could grow by about 50% by 2027 and as much as 165% by the end of the decade, driven primarily by AI workloads. McKinsey, with a particular focus on opportunities related to artificial intelligence, forecasts a growth rate of approximately 33% per year until 2030.
The gap between how quickly chips can be shipped and how slowly gigawatts come online is already showing up in revenues. Nvidia doesn't control this dynamic, but it lives within the revenue rhythm that flows from it.
Inside Nvidia's own world, the questions are more specific. Blackwell is expected to be the backbone of the next phase of growth, and the GB300 platform remains the centerpiece of nearly every bullish pattern on Wall Street. Stifel's Ruben Roy is trying to focus on the order book – his supply chain checks still point to a surge in orders for the GB300 towards the end of the year, “even as robust demand for the GB200 remains” – but investors want to hear from Nvidia whether “building up” still means accelerating or just holding at a very high level.
China stands apart from these operational issues, but adds its own instability to the story. Washington briefly reopened the door to H20 exports in September, then turned around and reportedly moved to block sales of the B30A—an export-compatible Nvidia Blackwell-based chip designed specifically for China—before it really took off. Meanwhile, Beijing has ordered state-funded data centers to stop using foreign artificial intelligence chips altogether and exclude them from new projects less than 30% complete.
When Nvidia forecast revenue of $54 billion for the quarter, it advised investors to view any sales in China in the 2020 half as a potential benefit to that forecast. And as much as Nvidia wants to return to the Chinese marketthe company's business in the country right now, Juan saiddecreases to zero. Trump said the company can't sell its best AI chips to Beijing. For Wall Street, this means China is functioning less as a catalyst for growth and more as a stress test. Any signal that demand is stabilizing—or that B30A is gaining traction without causing new regulatory problems—will be seen as a freebie.
And all of these topics tie into the question that animates the entire AI debate on Wall Street: Will hyperscalers continue to spend money at a vertical rate? Amazon, Microsoft, Meta, Alphabet, and Oracle have turned artificial intelligence infrastructure into the largest wave of capex in modern corporate history, spending staggering amounts of money—hundreds and hundreds of billions—and not slowing down. Were some kind of hiccupbut the Street still has a lot of faith in the wave. The company wants confirmation from Nvidia that the water level is not falling.
Nvidia doesn't provide capital spending forecasts, but how it talks about consumer demand, capacity ramp-ups and future capacity will tell analysts whether their long-term models are still too conservative or suddenly too bold.
This is why the environment feels heavier than it should. Nvidia's earnings call will do double duty as a financial update and a change in sentiment – and the market is already treating it as such. A clear quarter will be considered the moment of exhalation. Cautious guidance – even nuanced ones – can be seen as the first signal that the supercycle is changing its pace. Investors don't want perfection; they need continuity—proof that the AI cycle still has altitude, that the clouds overhead are temporary, that the weather changes in their favor.
Nvidia's earnings this week won't settle the AI debate. But they will reset the atmosphere around him. This is a company that has shaped market psychology more than any other over the past two years. On Wednesday, Nvidia's challenge next week is to show that the story is still expanding – not just in the numbers, but in the world those numbers describe.
