The world is (almost) holding its breath, while the market tries to control its heart rate. And the results came down this Wednesday night. Nvidia, in the third quarter of the 2025-2026 financial year, once again thwarted the dark “AI bubble” scenario. During the August-October period, Nvidia posted a figure of $57 billion, up 22% quarterly and 62% annually. The consensus is for turnover of $54.6 billion. The “realized by consensus” gap of 2.4 billion was a source of euphoria for investors.
The data center segment alone achieved revenue of $51.2 billion in the quarter ended October 26. Analysts, who are clearly too timid when it comes to Nvidia, are banking on sales of $48.62 billion. Overall, net income, still for the third quarter, jumped 65% compared with a year ago and fell 21%, to $31.9 billion.
Additionally, Nvidia announced that it expects revenue of $65 billion in the fourth quarter, compared to an initial consensus of $61.6 billion. Facing this prospect, Nvidia shares rose more than 3% during Wall Street’s post-close trading. These gains, combined with other AI-related stocks, resulted in a combined gain of more than $300 billion in market capitalization late Wednesday within 30 minutes of Nvidia’s earnings release.
Endogamy
These results, highly anticipated and for now reassuring, nevertheless come amid growing concerns of a financial bubble around artificial intelligence. Nvidia, which crossed the symbolic milestone of $5,000 billion in market valuation at the end of October, is a leading figure in a massive investment drive by tech giants in the field of AI, which the market is increasingly doubting.
One complaint that has emerged is the endogamous nature of the sector, fueled by deals between isolated leading technology companies, with no real links to the rest of the economy. “The entire AI ecosystem looks like a handful of companies trading billions of dollars without really seeing any money coming in from the outside.», Summary Ipek Ozkardeskaya, analyst at Swissquote Bank. Added to this is the competition towards data center gigantism, which is very capital intensive, coupled with the very large need for electricity which puts pressure on the energy sector.
Employment, inflation and the Fed
In line with Nvidia’s results, the market digested the “minutes” of the American Federal Reserve (Fed), the minutes of the financial institution’s last meeting in October, where it lowered its key interest rates. The minutes of this meeting show that the Fed lowered interest rates despite concerns about inflation.
To see the situation more clearly, investors await US employment data for September on Thursday. Publication of these statistics was discontinued due to a “shutdown” in the United States. But this datanow it is old and irrelevant» will bring «limited insight into the state of the labor market, ahead of a bigger test next week regarding inflation figures», estimates Kyle Rodda, analyst at Capital.com. However, an official report on labor conditions in October in the United States will not be published due to budget paralysis that interfered with data collection.
The absence of “new” indicators risks fueling uncertainty about the Federal Reserve’s future direction. A slow labor market would allow the Fed to justify further interest rate cuts to support economic activity. On the other hand, solid numbers would support the monetary easing pause hypothesis. A scenario that markets fear.
