Nvidia forecasts $20 billion in standalone Vera CPU sales

Nvidia Corp. projects $20 billion in future revenue from its upcoming Vera Rubin CPUs as standalone chips, a major clarification from CEO Jensen Huang that expands the company’s addressable market.

"The $20 billion forecast for the Vera CPU is for standalone sales, not including those sold in combination with the Rubin chip," Huang said on May 21, following the company's fiscal first-quarter results.

The chipmaker beat analyst expectations for the quarter, reporting an adjusted gross margin of 75 percent. While the company provided a strong outlook, it did not prevent a common pattern for the stock, which has often seen profit-taking after earnings releases.

Metric	Actual	Consensus
Revenue	Beat	$79.2B
Adj. EPS	Beat	$1.77
Adj. Gross Margin	75%	~75%

Despite the strong quarterly performance, Nvidia shares slipped in after-hours trading. The new CPU-specific forecast signals a direct challenge to incumbents Intel and Advanced Micro Devices in the server processor market, a segment seeing renewed focus during the "agentic" phase of AI development. This phase requires more traditional CPUs for semi-autonomous bots that perform tasks independently.

Huang expressed confidence in the company's position, stating that Nvidia's share of the AI inference market is "growing very quickly." He also noted that demand for the next-generation Vera Rubin platform, set to ship in the second half of the year, is expected to outstrip production capacity. "My sense is that we'll be supply constrained throughout the entire life of Vera Rubin," Huang said.

The clarification on the CPU sales forecast suggests management sees a significant opportunity beyond its dominant GPU business. Bank of America analysts noted before the report that Nvidia's Vera CPU will be a "formidable rival" in the standalone CPU market, which is becoming increasingly crowded with offerings from both established players and startups.

The $20 billion standalone CPU target provides investors with a new, specific metric to track Nvidia's diversification efforts. The company's ability to capture a meaningful share of this market will be a key focus for analysts, especially as competitors like AMD and Google with its Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) also vie for dominance in the expanding AI infrastructure space.

This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.