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Nvidia once again beat Wall Street expectations when it reported earnings on Wednesday. But for a company that has enjoyed a stunning growth spurt over the past two years, stellar numbers alone may no longer be enough to wow investors.

The AI ​​chipmaker — whose shares have fueled the market’s feverish rally this year — reported more than $30 billion in sales in its fiscal second quarter, up 122% from the year-ago period and surpassing the $28.7 billion that Wall Street analysts had expected. Profit for the quarter also more than doubled to $16.6 billion, up from analysts’ forecast of $15 billion.

The company also released a slightly better-than-expected revenue forecast for the current quarter, which is also an encouraging sign for investors.

Still, Nvidia shares fell as much as 5% in after-hours trading following the report.

Nvidia’s unmatched AI processors have helped fuel a boom in AI technologies across the tech sector, as well as an AI craze on Wall Street. The company’s shares are up a staggering 154% this year and more than 3,000% over the past five years on the back of the AI ​​craze. The company’s market cap now exceeds $3 trillion, one of only three U.S. companies to ever reach that milestone.

However, major questions have emerged about the sustainability of the AI ​​hype cycle, largely due to uncertainty over whether and how quickly the technology will contribute to tech giants’ profits.

Plus, a company can only grow this fast for so long. While Nvidia beat Wall Street expectations for both its top and bottom lines, investors seemed disappointed that it didn’t exceed by a wider margin. And rumors of potential delays in the company’s latest AI chips, called Blackwell, had added to concerns leading up to the earnings report, though executives said during Wednesday night’s earnings call that Nvidia still expects to start generating revenue from Blackwell this fiscal year.

“While the numbers indicate that the AI ​​revolution is alive and well, the smaller increase compared to previous quarters adds to the many warning signs raised earlier this earnings season in the technology sector,” Thomas Monteiro, a senior analyst at Investing.com, said in an email.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in an interview with Bloomberg on Wednesday that while demand for Blackwell “far exceeds supply,” “we will have a lot of supply and we can scale starting in Q4.”

Nvidia’s share price performance is having a domino effect on the broader market, thanks to the company’s outsized weight of roughly 7% in the S&P 500.

The company’s “earnings report has become the most important financial news in the world,” Bespoke Investment Group wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

Despite investor caution, things don’t appear to be calming down for the chipmaker any time soon.

Nvidia’s data center business remains a key driver of its success, a sign that demand for AI infrastructure in the tech sector shows no signs of slowing. The company brought in nearly $26.3 billion in data center sales, which accounted for 87% of its total revenue.

“The company continues to benefit from a market paradox: Big Tech’s aggressive AI investment strategies are driving massive demand for Nvidia’s chips, while these companies are investing in developing their own silicon,” Jacob Bourne, technology analyst at Emarketer, said in an emailed statement.

Indeed, Silicon Valley heavyweights continue to ramp up their investments in AI infrastructure, with much of that going toward purchasing chips from Nvidia. In their own earnings reports earlier this month, Google, Microsoft and Meta Platforms all said they would increase their AI spending.

Meta said it expects full-year capital spending to be between $37 billion and $40 billion, a $2 billion increase from the low end of last quarter’s guidance. Microsoft said it expects to spend more in fiscal 2025 than the $56 billion in capital spending it forecast in 2024. Google forecast capital spending “at or above” $12 billion for every quarter this year. (Even for extremely wealthy companies, those are big numbers — for Google, capital spending in the second quarter was about 17% of total revenue.)

Despite concerns about potential delays at Blackwell, research firm Third Bridge estimates that 60-70% of AI model training at so-called hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Google will be done using the new Nvidia chips by the end of next year, according to analyst Lucas Keh.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang defended the company’s strategy during a call with analysts on Wednesday following the report, reminding them that the company’s chips power not just AI chatbots but also ad-targeting systems, search engines, robotics and recommendation algorithms, such as those behind social media feeds.

“People who invest in Nvidia infrastructure get an immediate return on their investment,” Huang said, adding that the company’s more powerful chips process data more efficiently, saving customers money. “In the future, every data center will have GPUs,” the kind of chip Nvidia has become known for, Huang said.

Together, these factors should mean that even if the hype surrounding Nvidia’s stock – which has now reached the point where people are holding earnings listening sessions like it was a championship game – fades, the company’s fundamentals will remain strong for the foreseeable future.