The most consequential corporate event of the quarter lands tonight. Nvidia will release its second-quarter results after the US market close, around 22:00 CET. While the past quarter is expected to be enormous, what will move markets is what CEO Jensen Huang says about the months ahead.
Four times a year, listed companies open their books and tell investors exactly how much money they made and how much they expect to make next quarter. These earnings reports move share prices, pension funds and ultimately, the wider economy. Nvidia's matters more than most because it makes the chips that power the artificial intelligence boom. If its outlook disappoints, the shockwaves will not stay in Silicon Valley.
The company has become a proxy for the entire AI rally. The report lands on the back of a difficult run for Nvidia's stock, which has lost ground for seven consecutive sessions, its longest losing streak since 2022. Shares rebounded roughly 3% since Monday ahead of the earnings report but are still down over 6% from last week's open.
European chipmakers in the crosshairs
European chipmakers have as much riding on tonight's guidance as Wall Street. ASML, the Dutch group whose lithography machines underpin Nvidia's entire supply chain, has raised its own 2026 sales forecast twice this year on the back of AI demand. Its shares, along with those of Dutch chip-equipment maker BE Semiconductor and German optics group Jenoptik, tend to move in step with Nvidia's outlook.
For the month of August, Nvidia is still up around 8% and year-to-date performance is solid, with the stock increasing over 13% since the yearly open. Analysts polled by Bloomberg expect adjusted earnings of $2.09 a share on revenue of roughly $92 billion (€78.8bn), which would represent growth of 96% on the same quarter last year.
Nvidia itself had forecast $91 billion (€78bn), give or take 2%, meaning consensus sits less than a percentage point above the company's own midpoint. That narrow gap raises the bar, as a modest beat may not be enough to satisfy investors. As for data centre revenue, it is forecast to top $85.4 billion (€73.1bn), up around 105%.
Investors will get a clearer look at where that money comes from, because Nvidia changed its reporting last quarter to separate sales to hyperscalers and AI clouds, expected at $43.5 billion (€37.2bn), from industrial and enterprise customers, projected at $41.7 billion (€35.7bn). The company has beaten Wall Street estimates in 22 of the past 24 quarters.
The question hanging over Nvidia's quarter
The main concern regarding Nvidia is concentration. The firm still draws the bulk of its revenue from Amazon, Google and Microsoft, each of which is designing its own chips to reduce reliance on the company. The new disclosure will show precisely how large that dependence remains. Huang's commentary on demand into 2027 therefore carries more weight than any single figure.
The question has grown sharper since July, when markets fell on doubts about whether vast AI investments will generate returns. Nvidia's answer has been to help finance the buildout itself, assembling a $500 billion (€433bn) capital pool with Wall Street firms this month and backing an eight-gigawatt data centre in Ohio alongside OpenAI.
A week stacked with market catalysts
Nvidia is not the only major test for the markets this week. July's personal consumption expenditures index, the Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge, is due at 14:30 CET on Wednesday alongside a second estimate of second-quarter GDP. Economists expect headline prices to have risen 0.1% on the month and the core measure 0.2%, leaving the annual core rate at 3.3%.
Attention then shifts to Wyoming, where the Kansas City Fed's Jackson Hole symposium opens on Thursday. Kevin Warsh delivers the keynote on Friday, his first as Fed chair, 19 days before a September policy meeting that markets currently price as roughly a one-in-three chance of a rate rise. The ECB's Isabel Schnabel joins a panel the same day.
For European investors, the interplay between Nvidia's guidance and the Fed's next move will be crucial. A strong outlook could bolster tech stocks across the continent, while a weak one might reignite concerns about a broader slowdown. As always, the ripple effects of this single earnings report will be felt far beyond the trading floors of New York and Frankfurt.
