NVIDIA filed $96 billion. The $105 billion fine print is redacted.

Figures trace to NVIDIA's Q2 FY2027 press exhibit (8-K 0001045810-26-000073, filed 2026-08-26) and the 10-Q for the quarter ended 2026-07-26 (0001045810-26-000075, filed the same evening) including Exhibit 10.1. No street consensus is quoted. Research, not investment advice.

Before the print we listed five things that would matter more than the revenue number, and the options market priced a ±5.8% move. Here is what the filings actually said.

The number

NVIDIA ($NVDA) reported revenue of $96.2 billion, up 18% from the prior quarter and 106% from a year ago. Data Center was $89.0 billion (+117%). Gross margin held at 75.0%. GAAP diluted EPS was $2.46; non-GAAP $2.22. The guide for Q3 is $108.0 billion ±2% at 74% gross margin, and it explicitly assumes no Data Center compute revenue from China.

Inside Data Center, the mix shifted: Hyperscale grew 13% sequentially to $48.7 billion, while AI Clouds, Industrial & Enterprise grew 25% to $40.3 billion. The buyers with the biggest balance sheets are no longer the fastest-growing line.

The shares closed the regular session at $209.66, down 1.6%, and traded around $219.5 after hours — about +4.7%, inside the ±5.8% the straddle had priced. Fifth print in a row where the realized move stayed inside the implied one.

The exhibit: filed, and blacked out

The August 8-K promised the form of the residual-value guaranties would file with this 10-Q. It did — Exhibit 10.1, "Form of Residual Value Guaranty." Three things we said to look for are in it. All three are redacted:

The guaranteed minimum value per lease — defined as "the then-applicable Guaranteed Minimum Value … as shown on Schedule II." Schedule II is [redacted].
The discount rate used to compute the covered loss: "Discount Rate" shall mean [redacted]%.
The credit rating that releases NVIDIA: the guaranty terminates when "Tenant or Tenant Parent achiev[es] a credit rating of [redacted]," or when a bank guaranty or letter of credit from an issuer rated "greater than or equal to [redacted]" replaces it.

What is public: the $105 billion aggregate cap; nine construction phases with the first lease "expected in fiscal year 2029"; 20-year lease terms; that NVIDIA's exposure is "limited to defined portions of lease and power payments and not the full cost of the site"; and the remedy menu on a trigger — assume the lease, force a re-let, run a sale, let it terminate, or defer for up to a year while paying project costs. NVIDIA also holds an option, "in our sole discretion," to backstop another ~3.8 gigawatts.

So the cap is a ceiling, as we said. But the number that decides how much of that ceiling is ever reached — the guaranteed minimum value — is exactly the number the company kept confidential. That is legal and common. It also means the market is pricing a $105 billion contingent obligation without the one input that sizes it.

The obligations ledger, now filed

This 10-Q is the first with the full financing architecture in one place. The commitments table totals $366 billion:

Supply and capacity: $279 billion ($92B in the rest of FY27, $87B in FY28, $88B in FY29).
Cloud service agreements: $29 billion in the table; the text says $36 billion of typically six-year commitments under a new model in which NVIDIA commits to buy cloud capacity from "select AI cloud partners" that buy its hardware — capacity the partners "can unilaterally stop providing to us and sell to third-party customers at more advantageous rates."
Data center leases not commenced: $25 billion, ~15-year terms, starting FY2028–29, which NVIDIA "expect[s] to reassign … to third parties."
Equity investment commitments: $25 billion, on top of $99 billion of equity investments already held (non-marketable securities alone carry $9.1 billion of unrealized gains) and $3.3 billion of equity-method stakes in "infrastructure financiers."
A further $3.5 billion of land, power and shell guarantees for AI-cloud partners' leases, and the August memoranda for financing platforms "designed to mobilize more than $500 billion" of third-party capital.

Two balance-sheet lines say the same thing in cash terms. Receivables rose to $63.1 billion and days sales outstanding to 60, from 45, which the CFO commentary attributes to "extended payment terms on large, multi-quarter agreements" — the 10-Q says investment-grade customers can get 90 days to one year. And in June NVIDIA issued $25.0 billion of senior unsecured notes across seven tranches, taking debt from $8.5 billion to $33.4 billion, in the same quarter it returned a record ~$26.0 billion to shareholders. Inventories rose to $31.6 billion from $21.4 billion, raw materials tripling.

None of this is hidden; all of it is in the filing. The point is the shape: the vendor is now lender, tenant-guarantor, cloud customer and equity investor to the same set of buyers. It is the pattern of our shadow-debt map, with NVIDIA on the providing side of the guarantees.

Concentration and the geography line

Customer concentration eased at the top: one direct customer at 16% of Q2 revenue, versus 23% and 16% for the top two a year ago; for the half, three at 16%, 15% and 13%. The sentence from last quarter survived verbatim: "one AI research and deployment company contributed a meaningful amount of our revenue by purchasing cloud services from our customers." Receivables are more concentrated than revenue — five direct customers hold 22%, 14%, 13%, 11% and 10% of the balance.

The geography line we flagged reversed. Revenue from customers headquartered outside the U.S. was 38% this quarter (30% a year ago, 22% last quarter), almost entirely because Taiwan-headquartered customers bought $27.0 billion — up from $8.9 billion. NVIDIA's own footnote is the explanation: geography is by the direct customer's headquarters, and "the end customer and shipping location may be different." Racks are assembled in Taiwan for U.S. buyers; the "flip" was never about where the compute ends up.

What the call added

The filing sizes the machine; the call priced its next year. Four things management said that are not in the 8-K (quotes from the call, via our transcript index):

A preliminary FY28 number. "Our preliminary expectation is for fiscal year 28 revenue to grow approximately 70% year-over-year" — and that is the supply-constrained figure: "customers' forecasts point to our growth doubling next year … we expect supply to remain a bottleneck at least through the end of fiscal year 28." Vera Rubin, at "about 40 billion per gigawatt" versus Blackwell's 25, is expected to be ~20% of Data Center revenue already in Q3.
A gross-margin reset. "We are resetting expectations today": 74% in Q3, a bottom of 71–72% in Q4, then 72–73% in FY28 "as executed price increases take effect in Q1." The cause is memory: "extreme pricing conditions … the magnitude of the price increase has exceeded our prior expectations." The 75% quarter just printed is, by management's own guide, the high-water mark.
The financing, in management's words. OpenAI's "existing and planned commitments represent approximately 12 gigawatts of NVIDIA compute" through 2030; NVIDIA will also "provide selective credit enhancement for nearly two gigawatts" for a second frontier lab; it has "invested nearly 50 billion in the frontier AI labs"; and "demand from the AI labs for which we expect to leverage our balance sheet" should be "roughly a quarter of our business next year." Then, unprompted: "We know some will call this circular financing. We see it differently." The labs, in Colette Kress's framing, "lack the decades-long infrastructure contracts and investment-grade financing capacity" and NVIDIA "is needed to help power this flywheel."
Where the growth is coming from. Hyperscale grew 13% sequentially; "AI Clouds, Industrial & Enterprise" grew 25% and is guided to drive Q3, with hyperscale "expected to re-accelerate in Q4." Sovereign, sold through regional neoclouds, grew 35% sequentially and tripled year over year. China was "less than 1%" of Data Center revenue and stays at zero in the outlook.

Put the two documents together and the shape is explicit: a quarter of next year's demand is expected to run through NVIDIA's own balance sheet, the margin on it is guided down three to four points, and the guarantee that backstops the largest single piece has its trigger value redacted. Management is not hiding any of this — it said the word "circular" before anyone asked.

Where this leaves the bet

The market is paying for the $108 billion guide and the quarters after it, and this filing says the growth is real — and says, in the same document, that a growing share of it is being financed, guaranteed or purchased back by the company that sells the chips. That is not a flaw in the quarter; it is the shape of the buildout, and it is now on the record in Note 10 and Exhibit 10.1 rather than in headlines.

The exhibit is filed. The number that matters in it is redacted. Read Note 10.

Sources: Q2 FY27 earnings call 2026-08-26 (EvidInvest transcript index) · 8-K 0001045810-26-000073 (press exhibit, CFO commentary) · 10-Q 0001045810-26-000075 (filing, Exhibit 10.1). Research, not investment advice. Not a price call.