Nvidia Guided to $108.0 Billion for Its Third Quarter and Said the Number Assumes No Data Center Compute Revenue From China

by Yemi Abiodun · August 27, 2026

Guidance & Outlook Reporter, Earnings Dispatch

Alongside fiscal second-quarter results released after Wednesday's close, Nvidia issued an outlook for its fiscal third quarter of 2027. The release puts expected revenue at $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%.

Measured against the $96.221 billion of revenue the company reported for the quarter that ended July 26, 2026, the midpoint of that guide implies sequential growth of about 12.2%.

The outlook also carries a stated exclusion. The release says Nvidia "is not assuming any Data Center compute revenue from China" in the forecast. That is the company's own wording, and it means the $108.0 billion figure is a guide built without a contribution from that category. It is worth noting that the exclusion is not new to this quarter: Nvidia's first-quarter release of May 20, 2026 carried the same sentence, word for word, in the outlook that produced the quarter just reported.

What else is in the guide

Gross margin is guided to 74.0%, plus or minus 50 basis points, on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis. That is a full percentage point below the 75.0% the company reported on both bases for the quarter just closed, so the outlook contemplates a slightly less profitable revenue mix even as the top line steps up.

Operating expenses are guided to approximately $9.2 billion on a GAAP basis and approximately $9.0 billion on a non-GAAP basis. For comparison, the quarter just reported carried GAAP operating expenses of $8.408 billion and non-GAAP operating expenses of $8.232 billion. The GAAP guide therefore implies a sequential increase of roughly 9.4%, and the non-GAAP guide roughly 9.3%.

The release also gives a full-year fiscal 2027 tax rate expectation of 16.0% to 18.0% on both a GAAP and a non-GAAP basis, which the company states excludes any discrete items and material changes to its tax environment.

One structural note on comparability. The release states that beginning in the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Nvidia's non-GAAP measures no longer exclude stock-based compensation expense. That is why the GAAP and non-GAAP opex guides sit only about $200 million apart rather than the multibillion-dollar spread such a pair would have carried under the company's former presentation.

How the last guide performed

Guidance is only as informative as the company's record of hitting it, and the most recent data point is the quarter that just closed. In its first-quarter release dated May 20, 2026, Nvidia guided fiscal second-quarter revenue to "$91.0 billion, plus or minus 2%." The company reported $96.221 billion, about 5.7% above that midpoint.

The Zacks Consensus Estimate for that quarter, per a Zacks Equity Research article published Aug. 24 and accessed Aug. 27, was $91.8 billion of revenue and $2.09 per share; Zacks did not label the per-share mark GAAP or non-GAAP, and other compilers may carry different numbers. Nvidia reported GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.46 and non-GAAP diluted earnings per share of $2.22, with the GAAP figure the higher of the two because the non-GAAP presentation removes $7.771 billion of net gains from equity securities.

This desk did not obtain a compiled third-quarter revenue consensus from a named estimate provider dated after Wednesday's release, so no beat-or-miss comparison against the $108.0 billion guide is offered here. Compilers differ from one another, and forcing agreement between them would be worse practice than saying nothing.

Founder and chief executive Jensen Huang framed the demand backdrop in the release by saying that artificial intelligence has reached its inflection point, that compute is now revenue and that demand is accelerating. That is a company characterisation accompanying a company forecast, and both should be read as such.

Nothing in the outlook above is an estimate, projection or recommendation from this publication. Every figure is Nvidia's own, taken from its Aug. 26 press release except where the May 20 release is named.

The US market was open at the time of writing, about 11:15 a.m. ET on Thursday, Aug. 27, and no closing price for the session is available or given.