February 26 Market Recap: NVIDIA Earnings Ignite AI Frenzy; Circle Leads Crypto Market’s Comeback
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February 26 Market Recap: NVIDIA Earnings Ignite AI Frenzy; Circle Leads Crypto Market’s Comeback
If BTC fails to hold above $74,000, it could trigger a deeper decline.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: TechFlow
At 5:20 a.m. Beijing time on February 26, NVIDIA delivered earnings that rekindled global market confidence in the AI narrative.
Fiscal Year 2026 Q4 Results (ended January 25, 2026):
- Revenue: $68.13 billion, exceeding expectations of $65.56 billion and up 73% year-on-year
- Adjusted EPS: $1.62, surpassing expectations of $1.53 and up 82% year-on-year
- Data Center revenue: $62.3 billion, exceeding expectations of $60.2 billion and up 75% year-on-year
Even more critical is the Q1 FY2027 guidance: revenue guidance of $78 billion (±2%), far exceeding Wall Street’s consensus estimate of $72.6 billion—representing a 77% year-on-year increase.
This guidance stunned Wall Street. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri had previously warned that the market’s implied expectation stood at $74–75 billion; the $78 billion guidance is $3–4 billion above that implied range.
NVIDIA’s stock surged over 3.5% after hours, peaking at $203, before retreating to around $194–195—a still-solid ~2% gain. Based on this move, NVIDIA’s market capitalization rose by approximately $100 billion in a single day.
Moreover, its Data Center business posted explosive growth.
- Q4 Data Center revenue: $62.3 billion, up 22% quarter-on-quarter and 75% year-on-year
- Hyperscalers accounted for just over 50% of Data Center revenue; the remaining ~50% came from enterprise customers, AI model companies, sovereign AI initiatives, etc.
- Networking revenue hit $11 billion for the quarter, up 34% quarter-on-quarter and soaring 263% year-on-year—driven by surging demand for NVLink interconnect architecture amid Blackwell and GB200 system deployments
CFO Colette Kress revealed on the earnings call: “The four major cloud hyperscalers (Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft) have collectively increased their 2026 capex outlook by ~$120 billion since the start of the year, bringing the total to nearly $70 billion.”
CEO Jensen Huang’s core message on the earnings call: “Compute demand is growing exponentially—and the inflection point for Agentic AI has arrived.”
He highlighted three key trends:
- Both training and inference demand are growing exponentially—not substituting for one another, but compounding;
- The Grace Blackwell chip is today’s inference kingpin, slashing per-token cost by an order of magnitude; Vera Rubin will further widen this lead;
- Enterprise adoption of AI agents is surging, with customers racing to invest in AI compute—“This is the factory powering the AI industrial revolution—and the engine of their future growth.”
Huang also disclosed that Physical AI has already generated $6 billion in revenue for NVIDIA. Autonomous taxi fleets (Waymo, Tesla, Uber, WeRide, Zoox) are scaling from thousands of vehicles in 2025 to millions over the next decade—creating a “multi-hundred-billion-dollar revenue market.”
NVIDIA explicitly stated that its $78 billion Q1 guidance “excludes any data center compute revenue from China.” This is a crucial detail: NVIDIA proactively removed uncertainty around the Chinese market, delivering a “conservative floor.”
If U.S.-China trade relations improve and the Chinese market reopens H200 orders, there remains upside potential beyond the $78 billion baseline. As CFO Colette Kress noted previously, normalized sales to China could generate $50 billion annually.
U.S. Equities: Tech Rally, Nasdaq Leads Gains
U.S. equities closed Wednesday (February 25):
- Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 307.65 points, or 0.63%, closing at 49,482.15
- S&P 500 gained 0.81%, closing at 6,946.13
- Nasdaq rose 1.26%, closing at 23,152.08
NVIDIA rose 1.4% intraday, providing strong support to the broader market. Software stocks extended their rebound, marking their second consecutive day of gains.
After the NVIDIA earnings release, U.S. equity futures surged across the board:
- S&P 500 futures rose ~1.5%
- Nasdaq futures rose over 2%
- The $700 billion SPY ETF (tracking the S&P 500) rose over 1% after hours
Other AI-related stocks also rallied sharply after hours: TSMC rose 0.45% (and continued climbing post-market); Dell Technologies jumped 3.22%; Micron Technology rose 2.63%.
Gene Munster, Managing Partner at Deepwater Asset Management, stated bluntly on X: “The AI Infrastructure Trade is alive and well.”
Crypto Market: Circle Earnings Ignite Confidence; Bitcoin Surges 7% Past $69,000
If NVIDIA’s earnings reignited AI faith, Circle’s earnings delivered a shot of adrenaline to the crypto market.
On Wednesday, USDC issuer Circle Internet Group released its fiscal year 2025 Q4 and full-year earnings.
The report showed that, as of end-2025, USDC’s circulating supply reached $7.53 billion, up 72% year-on-year; Q4 on-chain transaction volume hit $11.9 trillion, up 247% year-on-year. Financially, full-year 2025 revenue and reserve income totaled $2.7 billion, up 64% year-on-year; Q4 revenue was $770 million, up 77% year-on-year.
Circle’s stock surged over 30%, hitting a recent high and becoming the brightest star in the crypto sector that day.
The significance of this earnings report extends far beyond a single company’s results—it serves as a barometer of crypto infrastructure health and market confidence.
The market reacted immediately.
Bitcoin began gaining momentum during the UTC midnight hour on Wednesday, surging over 7% within 24 hours—rising from near $63,000 to $69,361, its strongest single-day performance in three weeks. It marks Bitcoin’s most robust daily rebound since February and signals a shift in sentiment from “extreme fear” to “cautious optimism.”
Ethereum rose over 5%, reclaiming the $2,000 level.
Why is Circle’s earnings so important?
In crypto, stablecoins are foundational infrastructure—they serve as:
A medium of exchange: Stablecoins are the counterparty in virtually all crypto transactions;
A vehicle for liquidity: Capital flows between CEXs, DEXs, and DeFi protocols via stablecoins;
A confidence indicator: Rising stablecoin circulation = inflows into crypto; declining circulation = outflows.
Circle’s earnings showing a sharp rise in USDC circulation sends a clear signal: capital remains in the market.
Technically, RSI rebounded from oversold territory into neutral range, indicating improving market sentiment. However, Bitcoin remains range-bound over the past three weeks ($63,000–$70,000) and has yet to break through key resistance levels.
Analysts caution that this rally feels more like “a sigh of relief” than a trend reversal. CF Benchmarks analysts suggest Bitcoin’s weekend drop below $75,000 may have completed the “deleveraging sequence” begun in October 2025—placing the market at a pivotal inflection point.
If Bitcoin fails to hold $74,000 (the April low), deeper declines may follow. But if it breaks above and sustains above $70,000, it could target the higher resistance zone of $75,000–$80,000.
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