Sales growth hasn’t been a problem for Nvidia(NASDAQ: NVDA). In its most recent quarter, the artificial intelligence (AI) leader posted 56% revenue growth. Investors are starting to expect it, too. Nvidia’s quarterly sales have soared by nearly 700% over the past three years.
With sales thriving for such a long time period, maintaining a growth rate of 56% is astounding. Yet the market shrugged, and Nvidia stock is lower by 6% since the fiscal 2026 second-quarter announcement on Aug. 27. That reaction should catch the attention of long-term investors who want to benefit from the AI revolution.
Image source: Getty Images.
Stocks sometimes drop on earnings news, especially after a strong run higher leading up to the results. Nvidia shares moved sharply higher since early April lows. While some investors may have decided to take money off the table from that 85% rise, long-term investors should instead be taking notice.
That’s because the next leg of compute power needs for AI training and inference is just beginning. The amount of data center workloads running on Nvidia Hopper and Blackwell GPUs (graphics processing units) is steadily increasing. Nvidia’s complementary offerings, including software and full server stack optimization products, help explain the company’s continued revenue gains.
Data center revenue growth still looks to have a long runway, though. Nvidia believes that the approximately $600 billion in planned global data center infrastructure investments for 2025 will double over the next two years. In the fiscal second-quarter conference call, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress stated:
We expect annual AI infrastructure investments to continue growing, driven by the several factors: reasoning agentic AI requiring orders of magnitude more training and inference compute, global build-outs for sovereign AI, enterprise AI adoption, and the arrival of physical AI and robotics.
That echoes something CEO Jensen Huang told investors several months ago at the company’s May shareholder meeting. Huang said, “We’re working toward a day where there will be billions of robots, hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of robotic factories that can be powered by Nvidia technology.”
Nvidia is now ready for the robotics revolution. Its Jetson Thor robotics computing platform is available for developers working on state-of-the-art robotics. Nvidia says leading businesses are already using Thor. It named Amazon‘s robotics division, Boston Dynamics, Caterpillar, medical device company Medtronic, and Meta Platforms as early adopters.
Jetson Thor will help Nvidia’s Automotive and Robotics segment to keep growing. That business grew revenue by 69% year over year in Q2 to a record $586 million. That pales in comparison to its data center segment, but there’s more for investors to recognize.
Robotic applications require significantly more compute power both directly on the unit as well as in infrastructure. That adds a complement to Nvidia’s sales that should result in significant long-term additional demand for its data center platform.
That doesn’t necessarily mean investors should go all-in with Nvidia stock right now. Some of the market reaction following earnings was a concern for Nvidia’s growth prospects. The company reported no China sales in the quarter, and its forward guidance also assumes no revenue from China. China represented about 13% of its overall sales last year, so that could be an impactful loss.
Geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China, tariffs, semiconductor export restrictions, and emerging competition in China could effectively end Nvidia’s business there. That uncertainty could well drive more volatility for the stock.
Huang doesn’t seem worried, though. He touted the start of the age of physical AI that will support AI investments for robotics and industrial automation as the next growth driver. In the quarterly conference call, he told investors that every industrial company will not only need factories to build machines, but also another to build their robotic AI.
As Huang’s vision develops, it might be smart for investors to gradually add Nvidia stock. Buying in thirds is a way to handle potential volatility. That approach is one long-term investors can use to take advantage of any dips and reduce anxiety when the stock does move lower. Nvidia’s prospects remain bright, though, and the overall trend for the stock should be higher in the coming years.
Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this:
The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn’t one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years.
Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $651,599!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005… if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you’d have $1,067,639!*
Now, it’s worth noting Stock Advisor’s total average return is 1,049% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 185% for the S&P 500. Don’t miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor.
Howard Smith has positions in Amazon and Nvidia and has the following options: short October 2025 $160 calls on Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool recommends Medtronic and recommends the following options: long January 2026 $75 calls on Medtronic and short January 2026 $85 calls on Medtronic. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
