Nvidia did what Nvidia does best—delivered blowout earnings and impressive guidance.

But it’s what the market has come to expect, which might explain the slightly muted reaction to a report that included 73% revenue growth with 75% gross margin. 

The chip maker is still being rewarded for its dominance in the AI ecosystem—the stock is up around 5% this year, outperforming the S&P 500 and particularly the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite, which is down 0.4% in 2026. It’s just not quite the roaring gains investors are used to—the shares jumped 239% in 2023, 171% in 2024 and 39% last year.

Don’t worry, Nvidia will be fine. Demand for its AI chips is just insatiable and its market-leading position is secured. 

The problem for the broader market lies elsewhere. A slew of software earnings late Wednesday, including Salesforce, Snowflake and C3.ai, may add weight to concerns that some sectors may get left behind by the AI revolution.

“This past year has been transformative for every business, as the promise of AI became real,” Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy said after the data storage company beat expectations.

And that’s just it—there’s nowhere to hide now. The AI boom is here and companies need to provide tangible evidence that they can thrive in a world where the technology spreads to every part of the economy.

But the same point is true in reverse—investors need actual evidence that AI will severely disrupt companies’ business models. Much of the panic driving recent selloffs has been based on futuristic hunches or kneejerk assessments of the impact of new AI tools.

Nvidia earnings ought to quell any major AI fears for now, but investors need to be alert for signs of who will be the winners and the losers. The gulf between the two is only going to get wider.

—Callum Keown

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Nvidia beat earnings expectations as it continues on its seemingly unstoppable trajectory, as CEO Jensen Huang noted demand for compute power is growing “exponentially” as companies adopt agentic AI. The results could calm persistent fears about the sustainability of hyperscaler spending on AI data centers.

• Adjusted earnings were $1.62 a share and revenue jumped 73% to a record $68.1 billion. Fourth-quarter data center revenue soared 75% on strong demand for Blackwell chips. First quarter revenue is forecast in a range of $76.4 billion to $79.6 billion, also above expectations.

• Sales of Nvidia’s AI servers were strong in the fourth quarter, but it was the company’s industry-leading networking equipment that drove the big beat of Wall Street expectations. Sales of these were up more than 250% from a year ago, to $11 billion.

• A shortage of memory chips has become an issue across tech this earnings season, with hardware makers citing the shortage for all kinds of shortfalls, from sales to profit margins. But Huang hinted that the skyrocketing price of memory wouldn’t affect Nvidia’s profitability.

• Nvidia’s CFO Colette Kress seemed to confirm a Trump administration official’s suggestion from yesterday: there still haven’t been H200 chip sales to China since a limited number were approved for sale there. Nvidia hasn’t generated any revenue and they don’t know if any shipments to China will be allowed.

What’s Next: Huang said Nvidia continues to work with AI start-up OpenAI toward a new agreement and they believe they are close to one. But in a securities filing, Nvidia said there was no assurance that it will enter into an investment and partnership agreement with OpenAI.

—Adam Levine and Liz Moyer

Software maker Salesforce gave a lukewarm sales growth outlook that pressured its stock, forecasting revenue for the fiscal year ending in January 2027 at $46 billion. Investors have been fearful about software companies losing to competition during the AI era. Salesforce shares fell 4% after hours.

• CEO Mark Benioff said Salesforce now expects to hit $63 billion in revenue in fiscal 2030, citing rising demand for agentic AI. That’s above the target of $60 billion the company gave in October. But the 2027 forecast, indicating a rise of 10% to 11%, was underwhelming compared with analyst estimates.

• The comments accompany a better than expected fourth quarter showing, including earnings of $3.81 a share and revenue of $11.2 billion, up 12% from the prior year. Salesforce’s agentic AI offering, Agentforce, was building momentum, but software makers have to prove they can stand up to the competition.

• Agentforce annual recurring revenue reached $800 million in the fourth quarter, up 169% from a year earlier. Benioff said that the platform brings humans and agents together, and the more intelligence moves to where work happens, the more valuable Salesforce becomes.

What’s Next: Salesforce said it expects first-quarter adjusted earnings to be between $3.11 a share and $3.13 a share, which is above Wall Street’s consensus. Revenue for the first quarter is expected to be between $11.03 billion and $11.08 billion, which is also above expectations.

—Angela Palumbo

Disappointing C3.ai earnings are the latest proof that the artificial-intelligence boom doesn’t mean good times for every company linked to it. A slew of software earnings late Wednesday, including Salesforce, and Snowflake may add weight to concerns that some sectors may get left behind by the AI revolution.

• C3.ai shares tumbled 20% after the market closed Wednesday following a slide in total revenue and a bigger loss than expected. For the third quarter of fiscal 2026, which ended in January, the AI software company posted $53.3 million in total revenue—down from nearly $100 million in the year-earlier period. The consensus call among analysts tracked by FactSet was for $75.6 million.

• The company sells AI software platforms to large enterprises and government agencies, bringing in the vast bulk of its sales via subscription revenue. In the latest quarter, subscription revenue came in at $48.2 million.

• The adjusted net loss was 40 cents per share, worsening from a 12-cents loss a year earlier and significantly steeper than the 29-cents loss Wall Street had expected. C3.ai burned through $53 million in cash and equivalents during the quarter.

• Stephen Ehikian, who joined C3.ai as its CEO six months ago, said the company has cut costs recently and streamlined the sales organization. Those changes have turned it into a “more agile, more disciplined, and more accountable organization,” he said.

What’s Next: For the fourth fiscal quarter, ending in April, management expects revenue in the range of $48 million to $52 million, and continues to see operating losses. However, investors remain skeptical that C3.ai can boost revenue in the competitive market of AI enterprise software while also cutting costs.

—Evie Liu and Alex Kozul-Wright 

President Donald Trump has claimed that his tariffs on imports could raise enough revenue for the U.S. Treasury that they could “substantially” replace the federal income tax, a claim he repeated days after losing a key Supreme Court case. But tax policy experts told Barron’s it’s not that simple.

• Even the most optimistic estimates say tariffs could generate $400 billion or $500 billion a year, still about $2 trillion less than the annual revenue needed to finance the federal government, the nonpartisan Cato Institute said, adding that tariffs would need to be set near 80% to replace income tax.

• Tariff revenue is less than half of one percent of GDP, less than 10% of the defense budget alone, at 3% of GDP. Adam Michel, Cato’s director of tax policy studies, called what Trump is proposing “a mathematical impossibility.” The U.S. collected $264 billion in tariff revenue in 2025.

• Steve Wamhoff, federal policy director for the nonprofit Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, told Barron’s that replacing any substantial portion of personal income tax with tariffs “is not a proposal to be taken seriously.” Federal personal income tax brings in revenue equal to 6% and 10% of GDP.

• The Peterson Institute for International Economics said Trump’s wish would return the U.S. to the 19th century. The approval of the income tax in 1913 shifted the U.S. from a tariff-based model to one more reliant on a graduated income tax, opening the U.S. economy, researchers said.

What’s Next: The Supreme Court handed Trump a major defeat on Friday when it declared that the tariffs Trump applied to imports using emergency powers last year were illegal. But Trump has vowed to replace those tariffs using other legal authorities and even suggested he could use tariffs in an “obnoxious” way.

—Janet H. Cho

Paramount Skydance, the media company jousting with Netflix to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, reported a boost from streaming in its fourth-quarter earnings report. CEO David Ellison told shareholders that while happy with their standalone strategy, acquiring Warner Bros. could be an “accelerant” to achieving Paramount’s goals.

• Paramount reported fourth-quarter revenue of $8.15 billion, up 2% from a year earlier. The increase included a 10% rise in direct-to-consumer revenue of $2.21 billion, including a 17% gain from Paramount+ streaming revenue.

• CEO David Ellison wouldn’t talk about the revised $31 a share offer they made for Warner Bros., but acknowledged that the Warner board was examining it as a potentially superior offer. He said in a shareholder letter that their capital priorities continue to be investing for the long term and considering M&A where it can accelerate growth.

• Paramount said Wednesday that it ended the fourth quarter with 78.9 million paid Paramount+ subscribers, up 4% from a year earlier. Paramount+ premium subscriptions cost $13.99 a month, or $8.99 a month with ads.

• The company expects 2026 revenue of $30 billion, which would be up 4% from last yea