Nvidia heads into its August 26 earnings report with Wall Street already expecting another beat, but UBS believes the more important test may come one quarter later. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri expects Nvidia to deliver $94 billion to $95 billion for the July quarter, above the company's roughly $91 billion guidance, and then guide to $107 billion to $108 billion for the October quarter. Arcuri believes actual third-quarter revenue could exceed $110 billion as Blackwell demand remains firm and the first Rubin systems begin contributing.
UBS has raised its calendar 2027 revenue forecast to $681 billion from $649 billion and lifted its GPU shipment estimate to about 10.8 million units from 9.2 million. Bank of America sees a similar setup, with analyst Vivek Arya expecting Vera Rubin shipments, new Vera CPU products and continued cloud spending to trigger a multi-quarter upgrade cycle. BofA estimates Vera Rubin NVL racks could cost roughly $7 million to $8.5 million, compared with around $4 million for Blackwell Ultra, helping protect long-term gross margins around 73% to 74%.
Separately, Nvidia stock rose about 1% to around $227 on Monday after the company agreed to guarantee as much as $105 billion in lease payments tied to an OpenAI data center in Ohio. The facility is being developed by SoftBank-backed SB Energy under a 20-year lease. Nvidia will invest $1.5 billion in SB Energy and secure up to 8 gigawatts of AI computing capacity at the campus.
The Pike County site will initially have 4.25 gigawatts of capacity and is expected to come online in phases beginning in 2028. SoftBank and SB Energy plan at least 10 gigawatts of new power generation and will invest $4.2 billion in regional grid infrastructure with AEP Ohio. OpenAI says the project is expected to create about 35,000 construction jobs through 2032 and about 2,500 long-term operating jobs.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said OpenAI's existing and planned commitments represent about 12 gigawatts of Nvidia compute through 2030, with potential to reach 16 gigawatts if the arrangement is expanded. At those levels, Nvidia estimates the opportunity at roughly $600 billion of compute through 2030.
The financing role has drawn scrutiny. Nvidia previously discussed providing a guarantee of as much as $250 billion to OpenAI for the data center lease, and it has backed other AI infrastructure builders including CoreWeave, OpenAI and Anthropic. Nvidia rejected the circular financing characterization, saying 'OpenAI will pay the lease'.
