NVIDIA's Q3 Data Center Sales Soar 56%: Can NVDA Sustain the Momentum?

NVIDIA Corporation’s NVDA most powerful growth engine continues to be its Data Center business. In the third quarter of fiscal 2026, the segment generated $51.22 billion in revenues, representing 89.8% of total sales. This marked a staggering 66% year-over-year increase and 25% sequential growth.

The segment reached new highs as demand for accelerated computing, generative artificial intelligence (AI), and large-scale model training continued to rise across cloud providers and enterprise customers. Much of the momentum came from the rapid adoption of the GB300 platform and wider deployment of NVIDIA’s networking products, including NVLink and Spectrum-X. With hyperscalers racing to expand AI capacity, NVIDIA remained a key beneficiary of record spending on high-performance infrastructure.

The near-term outlook still appears solid, with the company expecting further strength from Blackwell shipments and expanding orders across cloud, sovereign AI and enterprise AI projects. NVIDIA also sees the growing adoption of agentic AI, long-context workloads and advanced inference systems, all of which depend on high-performance GPU clusters, as key catalysts for long-term growth.

The growing demand for the company’s AI chips used in data centers is likely to continue aiding its overall top-line performance. Analysts’ projections also suggest that the company is expected to surpass the fourth-quarter sales target of $65 billion. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fourth-quarter fiscal 2026 revenues is currently pegged at $65.53 billion, indicating a year-over-year increase of 66.6%.

NVIDIA’s Rivals in the AI Data Center Space

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. AMD and Intel Corporation INTC are two major companies that are competing closely with NVIDIA in the AI data center space.

Advanced Micro Devices is gaining traction with its MI300 series accelerators, which are designed to handle training and inference for large AI models. AMD’s chips have attracted interest from major cloud providers seeking diversification beyond NVIDIA’s ecosystem. While Advanced Micro Devices’ software stack is still developing, its performance and pricing advantages make it a credible alternative.

Intel is also reasserting its presence with the Gaudi series of AI accelerators. The company is positioning Gaudi3 as a cost-effective and scalable option for AI data centers, targeting enterprise clients looking for flexibility. Intel’s broad reach in CPUs and server infrastructure helps it integrate AI solutions more easily into existing systems.

NVIDIA’s Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates

Shares of NVIDIA have risen around 33.9% year to date compared with the Zacks Computer and Technology sector’s gain of 27.2%.

NVIDIA YTD Price Return Performance

From a valuation standpoint, NVDA trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 26.84, higher than the sector’s average of 28.71.

NVIDIA Forward 12-Month P/E Ratio

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for NVIDIA’s fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings implies a year-over-year increase of approximately 54.5% and 51.3%, respectively. Estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 earnings have been revised upward in the past 30 days.

NVIDIA currently sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

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This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research (zacks.com).

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