Nvidia’s Vera CPU raises pressure on AMD and Intel

Nvidia reported stronger-than-expected second-quarter results and issued third-quarter guidance above Wall Street expectations, while CFO Colette Kress said the company expects 70% annual revenue growth in fiscal 2028 compared with the Street’s modeled 44%. The bigger competitive signal came from Nvidia’s push beyond GPUs into CPUs designed for agentic AI workflows.

The company introduced its stand-alone Vera CPU last quarter for running AI agents, a market where CPUs are gaining relevance for orchestrating tasks, calling tools and coordinating steps between model calls. Nvidia says its CPUs can complete agentic tasks 1.8 times faster than industry standards and deliver fivefold the bandwidth per watt of any other data center CPU.

Kress said Nvidia still expects $20 billion in CPU sales in fiscal 2027, which ends in late January, and expects that figure to more than double in fiscal 2028. Intel reported $6.3 billion of data center and AI revenue in the second quarter, while AMD reported roughly $6.7 billion in data center revenue, though neither breaks out CPU sales separately. Bank of America analyst Vivek Arya lifted his server CPU market estimate from $170 billion to $210 billion by 2030, citing the rise of AI agents.