Nvidia just posted numbers that crushed every estimate on Wall Street. Its biggest customers are also quietly building their way around it.
During America's gold rush, the people selling picks and shovels made the real money. Nvidia has been playing that role for the entire AI boom.
The Numbers
Second-quarter revenue more than doubled to $96.22 billion. Net income jumped over 100% to $53.95 billion, or $2.22 per share.
Both figures beat analyst expectations. CFO Colette Kress went further on the earnings call, forecasting 70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028.
That guidance blew past what Wall Street expected. Analysts had projected 44% growth, not 70%.
The gap between those two numbers is unusually large for a company already this size. Most established tech giants see analyst forecasts converge closely with actual guidance by this stage of growth.
Salesforce posted strong results the same day. Its shares surged more than 12% after the company beat estimates and raised its full-year outlook.
Why the Threat Is Real
Old gold rush wisdom applies here too. When shovels get expensive enough, the miners start forging their own.
OpenAI, Google, Amazon Web Services and Meta are all now building custom AI chips. Each is a direct customer of Nvidia's today.
That's a real structural risk to parts of Nvidia's business. A customer building its own chip doesn't need to keep buying Nvidia's at the same volume.
The Same Chip MAIN Already Covered
OpenAI's first custom chip, Jalapeño, is central to this shift. MAIN covered its launch in detail last week.
CNBC's own reporting cites the same performance figures MAIN found in OpenAI's original announcement. Jalapeño delivered 1.5 to 1.9 times more AI work per watt than comparable Nvidia systems.
It also showed lower latency in the same tests.
That's independent corroboration of a claim that came directly from OpenAI's own testing. It doesn't make the underlying numbers independently verified, but it confirms the story is being reported consistently across outlets.
Nvidia's results also arrive during a notable market backdrop. Federal Reserve officials are meeting in Jackson Hole this week, with investors watching for signals on interest rates.
Demand for AI compute isn't slowing regardless of what comes out of that meeting. Nvidia's numbers make that plain on their own.
What This Means for Miami
Nvidia's earnings are the clearest real-world data point yet for a dynamic MAIN has already covered. Apollo economist Torsten Slok's research found the upstream layer of AI infrastructure stays profitable.
The chip layer is thriving even as questions swirl about profitability further down the AI value chain.
The custom chip threat complicates that picture slightly. If Jalapeño-style competition spreads across more major labs, Nvidia's own growth curve could look different a year from now.
For Miami's AI infrastructure investors, that tension is the story to watch. Record earnings today don't guarantee the same margin structure holds through 2028.
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