Manhattan, New York
— August 28, 2025

When it comes to a company like NVIDIA, try to imagine the world three, five, even ten years into the future. Think about the products and services you use and how technology might transform them. Then ask yourself: is NVIDIA driving that change, and do they stand to capitalize on it? Because that’s where the growth is, and that’s where the money is at.

NVIDIA’s highly anticipated earnings dropped last night. We dug into the report and pulled together a couple of Game Notes to help you evaluate the stock and the broader AI infrastructure market.

First up: the stock.
After all the hype, there was basically no post-earnings movement. But zoom out: NVIDIA is still up 30% year to date, 44% over the last year, and an incredible 285% over the past two years. The stock trades at a PE of 40, with a staggering $4.4 trillion market cap, making it the most valuable company in the world.

So why no big post-earnings move? At a high level, they came in right at expectations. Technically, they beat on revenue — $46.7 billion versus the $46.1 billion expected — and on EPS, $1.04 versus $0.98 expected. But they missed on data center revenue. That’s the bread and butter of NVIDIA’s business, accounting for 88% of revenue. They fell short by one to two percentage points, and that matters.

Let’s zoom out further — China.
Think about chips as the new oil. There’s massive geopolitical tension over who makes them, who controls them, and how they can power both economies and militaries. That’s why governments are tightening export controls, imposing special taxes, and even taking equity stakes in domestic chip companies like Intel.

For NVIDIA, U.S. export controls are still in place. If those were lifted, it could unlock an additional $6–7 billion in quarterly revenue. The open question is whether China will resume buying at previous levels, given political tensions and reports of intentional pullback.

What else are we watching?

• Hyperscaler CapEx. These are NVIDIA’s biggest customers, and any shift in cloud giants’ spending could materially impact revenue.
• Gaming. Small relative to data centers, but growing fast — we saw this echoed in AMD’s call too.
• Robotics & autonomous vehicles. Huge potential use cases, and NVIDIA is well-positioned.

At the end of the day, this is still a company posting record revenues with massive margins. They continue to innovate and lead the category.

Thanks for tuning in — and thanks to the Wall Street Game Notes community for following along. Let us know what you think. Be good.