2026

By Zaheer Kachwala, Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney

May 20 (Reuters) – Nvidia forecast second-quarter revenue above Wall Street expectations on Wednesday and announced an $80 billion share repurchase program.

Shares of the company ticked down 0.2% in extended trading.

The world’s most valuable company expects revenue of $91 billion, plus or minus 2%, compared with estimates of $86.84 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Nvidia’s results are largely considered a barometer for the AI market’s health, as its chips are used in virtually every major data center in the world, powering the largest and most advanced AI models.

“Nvidia delivered another beat, but at this point that’s essentially priced in as it keeps beating quarter after quarter,” said eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne. “The lingering question is whether it can convince investors the AI buildout has durability into 2027 and 2028, especially as the narrative shifts toward inference workloads and competing silicon from Google, Amazon, AMD, and Intel.”

The company also said it would increase its quarterly cash dividend to 25 cents per share from 1 cent.

Spending on AI infrastructure continues to grow rapidly, with U.S. tech giants, including Alphabet, Amazon and Microsoft, expected to spend more than $700 billion on AI this year, a sharp jump from around $400 billion in 2025.

RISING COMPETITION FROM CUSTOM CHIPS

While heavily relying on Nvidia’s expensive processors, the companies are also pouring funds into developing their own custom chips to run models, posing a risk to Nvidia’s long-held dominance over the chip industry.

Those chips are targeted at inferencing – the process by which AI responds to user queries – which represents a much larger market than training.

Nvidia is facing competition not only from Big Tech but also from other chip rivals, including Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, which have touted a large revenue opportunity from the inference market.

COMPANY MOVES TO PROTECT POSITION

The Santa Clara, California-based company has made moves to defend its position. It unveiled a new central processor and AI system built on technology from Groq – a chip startup specializing in inference – in March.

In the company’s quarterly results call with financial analysts, Nvidia’s finance chief, Colette Kress, said the market for Nvidia’s central processors, or CPUs, is roughly $200 billion and the company has “visibility into nearly $20 billion in total CPU revenue” this fiscal year.

The company is also spending heavily to ensure it does not hit supply-chain snags during a global memory chip crunch. Nvidia said on Wednesday that its supply rose to $119 billion in the fiscal first quarter, up from $95.2 billion the previous quarter.

Nvidia reported first-quarter revenue of $81.62 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of $78.86 billion, according to data compiled by LSEG.

Data center revenue in the quarter came in at $75.2 billion, compared with the average analyst estimate of $72.8 billion.

On an adjusted basis, the firm earned $1.87 per share, compared with market estimates of $1.76.

Nvidia also disclosed $30 billion worth of cloud computing agreements, up sequentially from $27 billion, which it said were to help its research and development efforts. Seaport analyst Jay Goldberg said in a research note last year that such commitment likely represents “backstops” in which Nvidia agrees to pay cloud computing companies that buy its hardware for excess capacity from those companies running Nvidia systems.

(Reporting by Zaheer Kachwala and Anhata Rooprai in Bengaluru and Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney in San Francisco Editing by Shinjini Ganguli and Matthew Lewis)

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NEW YORK (AP) — Promising a commitment to “ambitious journalism and agenda-setting conversations,” media scion James Murdoch has struck a deal with the Vox Media digital company to acquire New York magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network and the Vox editorial brand.

The deal with Vox, widely seen as liberal-leaning, represents a major move toward his own media empire for the 53-year-old younger son of Rupert Murdoch, who himself owned New York Magazine from 1976 until 1991. And it comes less than a year after the Murdoch family reached a deal on control of the 95-year-old mogul’s media empire after his death, ensuring no change in direction at Fox News, the most popular network for conservatives, under Rupert’s chosen heir, Lachlan Murdoch.

Under the new deal, expected to close within weeks, Lupa Systems, James Murdoch’s media company, acquires the three divisions — about half of Vox Media. Neither Vox Media nor Lupa was disclosing the sum. The New York Times cited people familiar with the matter saying it was more than $300 million. The acquired divisions will operate, according to a statement, as a subsidiary of Lupa — called Vox Media.

Not included in the deal are the Vox brands Eater, Popsugar, SB Nation, The Dodo, and The Verge. But the deal does include, along with New York magazine, its verticals The Cut, Vulture, Intelligencer, The Strategist, Curbed, and Grub Street.

It also includes the Vox Media Podcast Network. which features wildly popular shows like “Criminal” and “Pivot” with Kara Swisher and Scott Galloway. The network “has been the fastest growing business within Vox Media and will immediately put Lupa at the top of the podcast field,” said the Vox statement.

James Murdoch, a former CEO of 21st Century Fox who resigned from the board of News Corporation in 2020 over differences about content and direction, is known to hold less conservative views than his father. In the deal reached last year, James and his two older sisters. Prudence MacLeod and Elisabeth Murdoch, gave up any claims to control of Fox in exchange for stock valued at the time at $3.3 billion.

That deal created a trust establishing control of the Fox Corp. for Lachlan Murdoch, along with his younger sisters, Grace and Chloe.

In his own remarks about the Vox deal, James Murdoch said the acquisition “aligns well with our existing holdings and investments and reflects both our interest in the forward edge of culture and our deep commitment to ambitious journalism and agenda-setting conversations.

It will allow us to apply new tools across the businesses we are building, adding substantial production, distribution, and editorial capability to our group,” Murdoch said.

Current Vox chairman and CEO Jim Bankoff will lead the new Vox Media, becoming CEO of the new company upon closing.

“We are incredibly proud to have built and scaled several of the leading media properties of this generation,” Bankoff said. “Together under Lupa’s stewardship we are primed to be the best home for talent and the most dynamic media company of this new era.”

David Haskell, New York magazine’s editor-in-chief, noted in an email to subscribers that Lupa now becomes the magazine’s sixth owner since 1968.

Haskell promised that the magazine would continue with “the fearless, independent journalism that you expect from us.”

“We will continue to create news cycles, start conversations, contribute to the most important debates in politics and society, identify and explore what’s most interesting in contemporary culture, and always do our best to challenge our readers, surprise them, and help them make sense of the modern world,” Haskell said.

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Jocelyn Noveck covers the intersection of media and entertainment for The Associated Press.

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