Nvidia Statistics 2026: Revenue, History, Employees & Data

Last Updated: July 25, 2026

Nvidia Corporation is the world's most valuable company as of July 2026, with a market capitalization of $5.009 trillion. As of July 2026, NVIDIA has a market cap of $5.009 trillion USD, making NVIDIA the world's most valuable company by market cap. It was founded on April 5, 1993, at a Denny's restaurant in San Jose, California, by three engineers who had no idea they were building what would become the defining infrastructure company of the artificial intelligence era. NVIDIA Corporation

For the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Nvidia reported record revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% from a year ago and up 20% from the previous quarter. Record data center revenue was $75.2 billion, up 92% from a year ago. For full fiscal year 2026 ending January 2026, Nvidia generated $215.9 billion in total revenue - up 65% from $130.5 billion the prior year. The company has more than tripled its revenue in two fiscal years.

The story of Nvidia is the story of a company that accidentally built the right product at the right time - not once but twice. First for gaming in the 1990s. Then for artificial intelligence thirty years later. NVIDIA Corporation was founded in April 1993 by three American computer scientists: Jen-Hsun ("Jensen") Huang, previously a director at LSI Logic and microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD); Chris Malachowsky, an engineer at Sun Microsystems; and Curtis Priem, a senior staff engineer and graphic chip designer at IBM and Sun Microsystems. SEC.gov

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The most famous origin story in technology began not in a garage or a dorm room but at a Denny's restaurant on Berryessa Road in San Jose, California in 1993. Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem - three engineers who had worked at major semiconductor companies - met over coffee and decided to start a graphics chip company.

When they started their company, the founders saw that video games were computationally challenging but could potentially sell well. The insight was that the demand for realistic graphics in games would drive massive investment in graphics processing capability - and that general-purpose CPUs were fundamentally the wrong tool for the job. Parallel processing - where many calculations happen simultaneously rather than sequentially - was what rendering images required. That architectural insight, applied to gaming, is what later made Nvidia the essential infrastructure for artificial intelligence. sec

The name NVIDIA is an amalgamation of two terms: invidia, the Latin word for envy, and the abbreviation NV (short for next vision), which the company used early on to label its files. SEC.gov

In the year of its founding, the company received an initial investment of $20 million in venture capital funding from firms such as Sequoia Capital, giving it the early financial support and market credibility that would lead to its initial public offering six years later, in 1999. SEC.gov

The founding team's backgrounds were complementary in a way that shaped the company's culture. Huang brought business and systems vision from LSI Logic and AMD. Malachowsky brought Sun Microsystems engineering discipline. Priem brought graphics chip design expertise from IBM and Sun. All three had seen enough of the semiconductor industry to know what they were building against.

The first product, the NV1 launched in 1995, was not a success. It used a proprietary approach to 3D graphics that lost to Microsoft's Direct3D standard. The company almost did not survive. Nvidia pivoted and released the RIVA 128 in 1997, which succeeded and kept the company alive. That near-death experience shaped Jensen Huang's approach to product strategy - be fast, be willing to change direction, and never assume your current approach will win.

Jensen Huang is the only CEO Nvidia has ever had. He has served as president, chief executive officer, and board member since founding the company on April 5, 1993. That 33-year tenure at the helm of a company he built from a Denny's conversation to the world's most valuable technology company is without precedent in modern technology history.

Early life:

Born in Taiwan, Huang moved to Thailand as a child, but his family sent him and his brother to the U.S. as civil unrest mounted in the Asian nation. Shortly after arriving in the U.S., Huang was sent to a boarding school in rural Kentucky for troubled youth by his aunt and uncle, who mistook it for a prep school. That school was the Oneida Baptist Institute. Huang has spoken about this experience publicly - living in a rural Kentucky boarding school for troubled youth at age nine was not what his parents intended, but Huang has said it built resilience and adaptability. Yahoo Finance

Education:

Master of Science in Engineering, Stanford University; Bachelor of Science in Engineering, Oregon State University. Huang later donated $50 million to Oregon State University for a namesake research center and $30 million to Stanford for an engineering center. Yahoo Finance

Professional background:

Before Nvidia: microprocessor designer at Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and director at LSI Logic. He was 30 years old when he co-founded Nvidia.

Ownership:

Jensen Huang, as co-founder and CEO, held approximately 3.5% as of the most recent proxy filing. At a $5 trillion market capitalization, 3.5% represents approximately $175 billion in personal Nvidia stock holdings - placing him among the wealthiest people on earth. Stock Titan

The leather jacket:

Jensen Huang is instantly recognizable at technology conferences by his signature black leather jacket. He wore it at every GTC (GPU Technology Conference) keynote, at CES, and at Computex. The jacket has become as associated with Nvidia as Steve Jobs's black turtleneck was with Apple.

Awards and recognition:

Under Huang, Nvidia's GPUs became dominant first in computer gaming and now in AI, propelling the company's market cap past $4 trillion in 2025. TIME named him among its 100 Most Influential People of 2024. Glassdoor ranked Nvidia #1 Best-Led Companies 2025 - a direct reflection of Huang's leadership rating from employees. Yahoo Finance

Important note on Nvidia's fiscal year: Nvidia's fiscal year ends in late January, not December 31. Fiscal year 2026 (FY2026) covers February 2025 through January 2026. FY2027 Q1 covers February through April 26, 2026.

The full revenue history from official SEC filings:

Sources: Nvidia FY2026 Annual Report (SEC), Nvidia Q1 FY2027 Earnings (SEC)

The scale of the transformation:

Nvidia generated more revenue in a single quarter (Q1 FY2027: $81.6 billion) than it generated in all of fiscal year 2021 ($16.7 billion). The company that took 28 years to reach $27 billion in annual revenue now generates more than that in a single month.

FY2026 profitability (from official annual report):

Fiscal 2026 revenue: $215.9 billion, up 65% year on year. Gross margin: 71.1%. Operating income: $130.4 billion, up 60% year on year. Diluted earnings per share: $4.90, up 67% year on year.

Q1 FY2027 profitability (from official earnings release):

For the quarter, GAAP and non-GAAP gross margins were 74.9% and 75.0%, respectively. GAAP and non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were $2.39 and $1.87, respectively.

Operating income on a GAAP basis was $53.5 billion, 147% higher than the comparable quarter. Free cash flow for the quarter was $48.6 billion, against capital expenditure of approximately $1.8 billion.

Shareholder returns:

During fiscal 2026, NVIDIA returned $41.1 billion to shareholders in the form of shares repurchased and cash dividends. As of the end of the fourth quarter, the company had $58.5 billion remaining under its share repurchase authorization.

In Q1 FY2027, Nvidia returned a record $20 billion to shareholders and announced an additional $80 billion buyback authorization alongside a 25-fold dividend increase from $0.01 to $0.25 per share quarterly.

For our dedicated AI infrastructure analysis including Nvidia's role in the hyperscaler spending surge, our Nvidia AI statistics guide covers the chip economics and competitive position in detail.

The market capitalization trajectory is the most dramatic in corporate history for a company of Nvidia's scale and age.

Source: Companies Market Cap

From IPO to $1 trillion: 24 years. From $1 trillion to $5 trillion: 3 years. The acceleration reflects the AI infrastructure buildout that made Nvidia's GPUs the essential computing substrate for every major AI system on earth.

The $5 trillion market capitalization exceeds the annual GDP of Germany, the fourth-largest economy in the world. It is larger than the entire market cap of every publicly traded company in India combined.

The FY2026 segment structure (Compute & Networking and Graphics):

Fiscal 2026 reportable segments: Compute & Networking revenue $193.5 billion, up 67% year on year. Graphics revenue $22.5 billion, up 57% year on year. Total $215.9 billion, up 65% year on year.

Q1 FY2027: New segment structure:

Beginning Q1 FY27, three of these segments (Gaming, Professional Visualization, and Automotive) have been combined into a new segment called Edge Computing, which also captures revenue from devices for agentic and physical AI, AI-RAN base stations.

This restructuring reflects how Nvidia thinks about its business: AI computing (Data Center) is its primary business. Everything else - gaming, automotive, professional visualization, and emerging edge AI - is the Edge Computing segment.

Data Center (the primary business):

Data Center networking revenue in Q1 FY2027: $14.8 billion, up 199% year-over-year - reflecting the explosion in NVLink and InfiniBand network infrastructure connecting massive GPU clusters.

Gaming (now part of Edge Computing):

Gaming was Nvidia's original business and the foundation that funded the CUDA development that made the AI pivot possible. Gaming revenue peaked in FY2022 at approximately $12.5 billion before declining during the crypto mining bust and then recovering. In FY2026, gaming and related revenues are included in the $22.5 billion Graphics segment.

Professional Visualization:

High-end GPUs for professional content creation, scientific visualization, and enterprise workstations. Now part of Edge Computing. This segment powers Nvidia's Quadro/RTX Pro series and is growing as AI-assisted content creation drives demand.

Automotive:

Nvidia's DRIVE platform for autonomous vehicle AI. Now part of Edge Computing. Major customers include Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, and dozens of EV and AV companies. Revenue growing as the physical AI and robotics market expands.

NVIDIA employs 42,000+ employees in 38 countries. Source: Nvidia in Brief (official corporate document) Vested

The headcount trajectory:

The revenue per employee metric:

At $215.9 billion in FY2026 revenue with approximately 36,000-42,000 employees, Nvidia generates $5-6 million in revenue per employee - among the highest of any large technology company in history. The capital-light nature of Nvidia's fabless model (manufacturing outsourced to TSMC) allows it to generate extraordinary revenue without proportional headcount growth.

The talent profile:

Nvidia employs primarily engineers - chip architects, software engineers, AI researchers, systems engineers. The company's engineering culture is reflected in Jensen Huang's management style: he reputedly has no direct reports below the VP level and communicates across the organization flattly rather than through hierarchy.

IPO and early history:

Stock splits:

Nvidia has executed multiple stock splits:

Recent dividends:

NVIDIA announces $80.0 billion additional share repurchase authorization and increases its quarterly cash dividend from $0.01 per share to $0.25 per share. The 25-fold dividend increase (from $0.01 to $0.25 per quarter) announced May 20, 2026 with Q1 FY2027 results represents one of the largest percentage dividend increases in the history of large-cap technology stocks.

Institutional ownership:

Institutional investors hold the largest stakes. The Vanguard Group holds approximately 8.5%, BlackRock approximately 7.5%, and Fidelity Management approximately 4.5%. Jensen Huang, as co-founder and CEO, held approximately 3.5% as of the most recent proxy filing. Stock Titan

Stock performance milestones:

An investor who purchased $10,000 of Nvidia at the 1999 IPO at $12 per share would hold a position worth approximately $40+ million in July 2026, accounting for all splits - one of the greatest stock returns in the history of publicly traded technology companies.

China - the most complex market:

Nvidia's China revenue grew 15.0% in FY2026 to $19.68 billion, reflecting H20 chip sales before new export licensing requirements took effect April 9, 2025. Nvidia took a $4.5 billion inventory charge in Q1 FY2026 when the H20 became unlicensable for China's market. Stock Titan

The China situation is Nvidia's most significant geopolitical risk. The H20 chip - designed specifically to comply with export restrictions - was further restricted in April 2025, requiring Nvidia to write off $4.5 billion in inventory. Q2 FY2027 guidance explicitly excludes any data center compute revenue from China.

US revenue growth:

US revenue from Nvidia grew 261% between fiscal 2023 and 2024 due to increased demand in the Compute and Networking segment per WallStreetZen analysis of Nvidia SEC filings. US hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta) are Nvidia's largest single customer group.

Taiwan:

Taiwan revenue reflects purchases by TSMC-connected supply chain partners and Asian technology companies. Taiwan is a major revenue source reflecting the concentration of contract manufacturing and technology companies in the region.

The GPU architecture generations:

The CUDA pivot (2006):

The introduction of CUDA in 2006 is the single most consequential product decision in Nvidia's history. CUDA turned GPUs into general-purpose parallel processors that could be programmed for any task requiring simultaneous computation - not just graphics. For the first decade, CUDA was primarily used by researchers in scientific computing and physics simulation.

Then came deep learning. In 2012, AlexNet - trained on Nvidia GPUs using CUDA - won the ImageNet competition by a margin so large it shocked the computer vision community. That result started the modern AI era. Every major AI model since then has been trained on Nvidia GPUs via CUDA.

The H100: The chip that defined an era:

The Hopper architecture's H100 GPU, released in 2022, became the defining AI chip of the 2023-2025 period. Waitlists stretched 6-12 months. Companies competed for allocation. The H100 cost approximately $25,000-$30,000 per unit against a manufacturing cost of approximately $3,300 - an 88% gross margin driven by CUDA's switching costs rather than manufacturing exclusivity alone.

Blackwell (current generation):

The Blackwell architecture - B100, B200, and the GB200 NVLink72 rack-scale system - delivers 4x training performance and 30x inference performance improvement over H100 for reasoning-intensive models. Blackwell is sold out through mid-2026 with backlogs extending into 2027.

Vera Rubin (announced):

Jensen Huang announced the Vera Rubin architecture at GTC 2026 and Q1 FY2027 earnings. Named after astronomer Vera Rubin who discovered evidence for dark matter. Includes the Vera CPU - described as "the world's first processor purpose-built for agentic AI." Revenue contributions expected to begin in Q2 FY2027 onward.

The Mellanox acquisition (2020) - the most important:

The $6.9 billion acquisition of Mellanox Technologies is the most strategically important acquisition in Nvidia's history. Mellanox made InfiniBand networking - the high-speed interconnect technology that allows GPU clusters to communicate at the speeds required for large-scale AI training. When Nvidia bought Mellanox, it acquired not just a product but the networking layer that ties GPU clusters together. Without InfiniBand, the massive GPU clusters training frontier AI models would be bandwidth-constrained. With it, Nvidia controls the entire compute-and-networking stack. Data Center networking revenue in Q1 FY2027 reached $14.8 billion - up 199% year-over-year - demonstrating how significant this acquisition has become.

The Arm acquisition attempt (2020-2022):

Nvidia's attempted $40 billion acquisition of Arm Holdings - the UK-based chip architecture licensor whose designs power virtually every smartphone on earth - was the most ambitious technology acquisition attempt in history. The FTC, UK Competition and Markets Authority, and EU regulators all blocked it. The failure to acquire Arm was described by some analysts as a $40 billion strategic loss. In retrospect, given Nvidia's AI GPU dominance, the failure may have been less consequential than initially feared - Nvidia has been winning without owning Arm's architecture.

Run:ai ($700M, 2024):

The acquisition of Run:ai - a GPU orchestration platform that allows enterprises to efficiently allocate and schedule GPU workloads across clusters - added critical software infrastructure. GPU orchestration is a growing bottleneck as enterprises deploy larger, more complex AI workloads across mixed hardware environments.

Market share:

Nvidia holds approximately 70-90% of the AI accelerator market depending on the methodology:

The competitive landscape:

AMD's data center segment generating $21.6 billion for FY2025 represents genuine progress - 69% growth driven by EPYC CPUs and MI300X. But AMD's entire data center segment is approximately what Nvidia generates in one month. Intel's collapse from 68% of the combined AI data center market in 2021 to roughly 6% in 2025 is the most dramatic competitive implosion in semiconductor history.

The CUDA moat:

The primary reason Nvidia maintains 87% market share despite competitors offering similar or in some cases better hardware performance is the CUDA ecosystem. 7.5 million+ developers have built AI software on CUDA. PyTorch, TensorFlow, and every major AI framework are optimized for CUDA. Moving AI workloads off Nvidia GPUs requires rewriting and re-optimizing software that teams have spent years tuning. This switching cost - not manufacturing advantage - is what maintains Nvidia's pricing power and market position.

For our complete analysis of Nvidia's AI chip market share and competitive position, our Nvidia AI statistics guide covers the chip economics in detail.

9,800+ granted and pending patent applications worldwide. 1,300+ projects released under an open source license. Over 7.5 million developers in the NVIDIA Developer Program. 38,000 global startups in NVIDIA Inception program. Source: Nvidia in Brief Vested

The developer ecosystem:

The 7.5 million CUDA developers represent one of the most significant technology moats in the history of the semiconductor industry. This is not a passive user base - these are engineers who have invested years learning CUDA programming, optimizing AI workloads on Nvidia hardware, and building production systems that depend on Nvidia's GPU architecture. Every hour invested in CUDA optimization is an hour that increases the switching cost to any alternative.

The 38,000 startups in NVIDIA Inception - Nvidia's startup program providing hardware, software support, and co-marketing - represent the next generation of AI companies that will default to Nvidia infrastructure as they scale. Nvidia is deliberately building the ecosystem dependency that makes long-term market position durable.

Open source strategy:

1,300+ projects under open source licenses reflects Nvidia's approach to the software layer: open source the tools that developers use to build on Nvidia hardware, because every developer using those tools is a developer locked into the CUDA ecosystem. This strategy mirrors how Google open sourced TensorFlow to drive usage of its cloud infrastructure and TPUs.

No. 1 of "World's Best Companies of 2025" – TIME. No. 1 of "Best-Led Companies 2025" – Glassdoor. Vested

Additional recognition:

Nvidia AI Statistics 2026: Revenue, Market Share & GPU Data
The dedicated AI chip analysis - H100 economics, Blackwell architecture, market share data, and the competitive landscape.

AI Spending Statistics 2026
Where the $725B in hyperscaler AI capex goes - Nvidia is the primary beneficiary.

AI Statistics 2026: The Complete Data Guide
The master hub for all AI statistics - Nvidia's role in the global AI infrastructure picture.

GitHub Copilot Statistics 2026
AI coding tools built on infrastructure that runs on Nvidia GPUs.

Claude AI Statistics 2026
Anthropic's AI models trained on Nvidia infrastructure - the AI platform economics.

Generative AI Market Statistics 2026
The broader AI market that Nvidia's chips power.

AI Adoption Statistics 2026
Enterprise AI deployment rates - the demand side driving Nvidia's revenue.

What is Nvidia's revenue in 2026?
Nvidia generated $215.9 billion in total revenue for fiscal year 2026 (ending January 2026), up 65% from $130.5 billion in fiscal year 2025. The most recent quarter - Q1 fiscal 2027 ending April 26, 2026 - produced record revenue of $81.6 billion, up 85% year-over-year and 20% sequentially. Management guided Q2 fiscal 2027 to $91 billion (plus or minus 2%). Data center revenue for Q1 FY2027 reached $75.2 billion - up 92% year-over-year. Sources: Nvidia official SEC filings.

What is Nvidia's market cap in 2026?
As of July 2026, Nvidia has a market capitalization of $5.009 trillion, making it the world's most valuable company. The company crossed $1 trillion in market cap in June 2023, $3 trillion in 2024, $4 trillion in 2025, and $5 trillion in 2026. The trajectory from $600 million at the 1999 IPO to $5 trillion in 27 years represents one of the greatest value creation stories in corporate history.

Who founded Nvidia and when?
Nvidia was founded on April 5, 1993, by three engineers: Jensen Huang (previously at LSI Logic and AMD), Chris Malachowsky (previously at Sun Microsystems), and Curtis Priem (previously at IBM and Sun Microsystems). The founding meeting famously took place at a Denny's restaurant in San Jose, California. The company received $20 million in initial venture capital funding from Sequoia Capital and others. Jensen Huang has served as CEO every day since founding.

How many employees does Nvidia have?
Nvidia employs 42,000+ people in 38 countries as of the most recent official disclosure per Nvidia in Brief (Nvidia's official corporate summary document). The company had approximately 36,000 employees in FY2025 (10-K filing) and approximately 29,600 in FY2024. Headcount has grown significantly with the AI revenue surge. At $215.9 billion in FY2026 revenue and approximately 36,000-42,000 employees, Nvidia generates $5-6 million in revenue per employee - among the highest of any large technology company.

What is Nvidia's history?
Nvidia was founded in 1993 at a Denny's restaurant in San Jose by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. The first product (NV1, 1995) failed due to incompatibility with industry standards. The RIVA 128 (1997) saved the company. The GeForce 256 (1999) established the GPU category. The IPO followed in January 1999. CUDA, introduced in 2006, turned GPUs into general-purpose parallel processors. AlexNet's 2012 ImageNet victory on Nvidia GPUs launched the modern AI era. The H100 (2022) became the defining AI infrastructure chip. The Blackwell architecture (2024) extended the lead. By 2026, Nvidia became the world's most valuable company at $5 trillion.

What does Nvidia make?
Nvidia designs graphics processing units (GPUs) and AI accelerators. Its primary products: Data Center GPUs (H100, B100, B200, GB200 NVLink72) for AI training and inference; gaming GPUs (GeForce RTX series); professional visualization GPUs (RTX Pro series formerly Quadro); automotive AI platforms (DRIVE); networking products (InfiniBand, Spectrum Ethernet - acquired via Mellanox 2020); software platforms (CUDA, cuDNN, TensorRT, NIM microservices); and DGX Cloud AI computing services. Nvidia is a fabless semiconductor company - it designs chips but outsources manufacturing primarily to TSMC.

What is Nvidia's stock symbol and where does it trade?
Nvidia trades on the NASDAQ stock exchange under the ticker symbol NVDA. The IPO was on January 22, 1999. The most recent stock split was a 10-for-1 split on June 10, 2024. Institutional shareholders include Vanguard Group (approximately 8.5%), BlackRock (approximately 7.5%), and Fidelity Management (approximately 4.5%). Jensen Huang holds approximately 3.5% as co-founder and CEO.

What is Nvidia's biggest acquisition?
The most consequential acquisition is Mellanox Technologies, completed in 2020 for $6.9 billion. Mellanox made InfiniBand and Ethernet networking technology - the high-speed interconnects that allow massive GPU clusters to communicate during AI training. Data Center networking revenue reached $14.8 billion in Q1 FY2027 alone, up 199% year-over-year. The attempted acquisition of Arm Holdings for $40 billion (2020-2022) was blocked by the FTC, UK, and EU regulators.

Nvidia in July 2026 is simultaneously the world's most valuable company, the primary infrastructure provider for the AI era, and one of the most unlikely corporate success stories in technology history.

The Denny's origin is not just a colorful anecdote. It represents what the three founders were doing: meeting as peers, talking through a market hypothesis, and deciding to build something without the institutional support that most semiconductor ventures require. The first product failed. The company almost died. The pivot that saved it - to a graphics standard that could win - required the founders to abandon their original approach entirely.

That willingness to abandon what is not working and move rapidly toward what might is what produced CUDA in 2006 when there was no proven market for general-purpose GPU computing. It produced the data center pivot in 2017 when gaming was still the primary revenue source. It produced Blackwell in 2024 when Hopper was still generating record revenue.

The financial story is unprecedented. From $600 million at IPO to $5 trillion in 27 years. From $27 billion in annual revenue in FY2023 to $215.9 billion in FY2026 to an $81.6 billion single quarter. From a gaming chip company to the indispensable infrastructure of the largest technology investment wave in human history.

The question every investor, analyst, and technology strategist is asking in July 2026: is this the peak, or is $5 trillion the beginning? The $91 billion Q2 FY2027 guidance, the Vera Rubin architecture, the $1 trillion in confirmed customer purchase commitments, and the structural moat of 7.5 million CUDA developers all suggest the latter.

What is certain: the three engineers who met at a Denny's in 1993 to talk about graphics chips for video games built something no one predicted and that no one has replicated. That is the Nvidia story.