As earnings season nears its end, one of the most anticipated reports is still ahead—NVIDIA (NASDAQ: NVDA) will release its quarterly earnings on February 26. Investors and analysts are paying close attention to the company’s outlook, particularly its plans for rolling out its next-generation AI chip architecture, Blackwell.
Mizuho (NYSE: MFG) analyst Vijay Rakesh expects NVIDIA’s Blackwell adoption to start slowly in the April quarter before ramping up significantly in late 2025. In a note to clients, Rakesh pointed out that while demand for AI-powered GPUs remains strong, early adoption could face challenges due to the complex power and connectivity upgrades required for GB200-based AI servers.
For the January quarter, NVIDIA’s data center performance is expected to be in line with previous forecasts. However, growth in the April quarter might be limited as customers deal with power and cooling constraints—GB200 servers require 120KW per rack. As a result, Mizuho slightly lowered its revenue estimate for NVIDIA’s data center segment in the April quarter to about $36.7 billion.
Despite these near-term hurdles, the outlook for the second half of 2025 remains strong. Major cloud providers such as Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS, and Google Cloud are increasing their AI investments, which could drive demand. Oracle’s OCI, OpenAI, and even Apple could also contribute to NVIDIA’s growth in 2026.
There are risks, though, including stricter US-China trade restrictions that could affect NVIDIA’s H20 and B20 chips. Still, NVIDIA is expected to maintain its industry leadership, thanks to its strong CUDA ecosystem and vertically integrated hardware platform.
Cloud providers’ capital spending is projected to rise about 32% year-over-year in 2025, pushing demand for AI accelerators higher. Mizuho estimates the AI accelerator market could hit $350 billion by 2027, with NVIDIA potentially capturing 74% of that, while AMD (NASDAQ: AMD) is expected to hold around 5%, and custom silicon solutions making up the remaining 21%.
NVIDIA could also see a boost from the massive Stargate AI project, which is estimated to allocate $75-$100 billion for GPUs. The rest of the funding may go toward custom silicon solutions from Broadcom (NASDAQ: AVGO).
Mizuho has maintained its January quarter revenue forecast at $37.5 billion but adjusted April projections slightly downward to $41.1 billion in revenue and $0.89 earnings per share (EPS), compared to prior estimates of $41.8 billion and $0.91 EPS. The firm raised its full-year 2026 forecast, increasing projected revenue from $189 billion to $196 billion and boosting estimated EPS from $4.23 to $4.39. For 2027, revenue expectations were also raised to $236 billion, with EPS climbing to $5.36.
Mizuho reiterated its “Outperform” rating on NVIDIA stock, keeping its price target at $175.
