The earnings event of the season is here.

Nvidia (NVDA) will report its first quarter results for fiscal year 2026 after the market close today. Wall Street is expecting the AI chip darling to post another strong showing for earnings and revenue.

Analysts forecast that earnings per share (EPS) will jump 46% year over year to $0.88. Revenue is expected to increase 66% to $43.3 billion. These are some sizzling growth numbers, though less sizzling than what Nvidia posted in 2024.

"Nvidia is the one chip fueling the AI Revolution and the stock is not expensive. We see a $5 trillion market cap on the horizon for the Godfather of AI Jensen Huang and Nvidia," Wedbush tech analyst Dan Ives told Yahoo Finance.

Nvidia's earnings report is about more than just the company, however. It's a bellwether for the AI boom, which is showing some signs of a slowdown.

This time last year, Nvidia reported record quarterly revenue, up 262% year over year. Despite briefly becoming the world's most valuable company by market cap earlier this month, Nvidia shares are now slightly down year to date.

The pullback reflects investor anxiety about the pace of AI adoption and whether Nvidia can maintain its explosive growth.

On the Q1 earnings call last year, co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang said, "The next Industrial Revolution has begun."

Well, now investors want to know where it's headed.

Here are the top three things investors will be looking out for on Nvidia's market-moving earnings call.

Nvidia's data center segment, driven by AI chips like the H100 and its Blackwell platform, accounts for the lion's share of its revenue. Analysts will be listening for signals about cloud providers and hyperscalers like Amazon (AMZN), Microsoft (MSFT), and Google (GOOG).

Are they still placing large orders? Are there any hints of softening demand or delayed deployments? If so, that could rattle investor confidence in the AI infrastructure build-out and Nvidia's future.

Read more: How does Nvidia make money?

Nvidia has been benefiting from premium pricing on its high-performance chips. But with increasing competition from AMD (AMD) and custom silicon efforts from Big Tech companies, margins may come under more pressure. Investors will want to know if Nvidia is maintaining its pricing power or if it's beginning to feel cost compression, especially as it prepares for the high-volume rollout of Blackwell chips.