Vive la révolution!

Nvidia sold some chips last quarter. Quite a few of them, actually.

Revenue was $57 billion in Q3, the world’s most important company said Wednesday afternoon. That was up more than 62% YoY and easily ahead of consensus, which was looking for $55 billion, give or take.

The current-quarter guide was strong. Nvidia sees sales of $65 billion in Q4. Analysts expected $62 billion.

Jensen Huang started by delivering a matter-of-fact assessment of things as they stand now. “Blackwell sales are off the charts, and cloud GPUs are sold out,” he said, flatly. Compute demand for training and inference are “each growing exponentially.”

With that out of the way, he employed an especially heavy dose of his trademark hyperbole while modestly suggesting that this is one case where even the sky may not be the limit.

Huang described a “virtuous cycle” for the AI ecosystem where “foundation model makers” and startups are proliferating “across more industries, and in more countries.” “AI is going everywhere, doing everything, all at once,” Jensen declared.

Suffice to say the “new industrial revolution,” as he habitually describes the AI epoch, is intact and ongoing. At least according to the man leading it. Gross margin in Q3 was 73.6% and Nvidia expects that figure to expand by 140bps to 75% for the current quarter. EPS of $1.30 for Q3 beat estimates.

Although market participants are still swept up in the hype, many investors are beginning to question the self-referential nature of the deals at the center of the frenzy. A lot of those tie-ups involve Nvidia directly, and even the ones that don’t will accrue to Huang one way another given that he still has a de facto monopoly.

“There is no doubt that fundamental demand is strong  — how could it not be with more than $1.5 trillion in AI deals announced in the past couple of months?” JonesTrading’s Mike O’Rourke remarked. “In today’s world, Nvidia is the bluest of the blue chips, which is what makes it a bellwether, but we have already witnessed more speculative AI names succumb to market doubts about the quality of their backlogs and their ability to execute on projected timetables,” he added.

The figures above, from Nomura, are a reminder you scarcely need: AI is the equity market. And Nvidia is AI.

The bank’s Charlie McElligott calls that the “everything singularity.” “The AI trade = US equities and with stocks being the largest part of US household financial assets, the health of the AI trade” is inextricably bound up with the “wealth effect impulse behind consumption and sentiment,” McElligott said.

I won’t opine on how this report will ultimately impact the stock once the call’s over, but I’d be remiss not to state the obvious: These results are strong, and Huang’s not exactly known for giving investors a reason to doubt their own bullish predilections.

Nvidia, you’re reminded, isn’t terribly expensive at 29x. That’s just barely richer than the Nasdaq 100.

Oh, and the company has $61 billion in cash. So, if Huang wants to finance more in the way of demand for his own products, he certainly has the wherewithal to do it.