February 26 Market Overview: Nvidia's Earnings Report Sparks AI Frenzy, Circle Leads Crypto Market Counterattack

If BTC cannot hold above $74,000, it could trigger a deeper decline.

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

At 5:20 a.m. Beijing time on February 26, Nvidia delivered a financial report that reignited global market confidence in the AI narrative.

Q4 Fiscal Year 2026 Results (as of January 25, 2026):

• Revenue: $68.13 billion, beating expectations of $65.56 billion, up 73% year-over-year
• Adjusted EPS: $1.62, beating expectations of $1.53, up 82% year-over-year
• Data Center Revenue: $62.3 billion, beating expectations of $60.2 billion, up 75% year-over-year

More importantly, the Q1 2027 fiscal year guidance projects revenue of $78 billion (±2%), far exceeding Wall Street’s forecast of $72.6 billion, representing a 77% year-over-year increase.

This guidance caught Wall Street off guard. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri previously warned that market expectations were around $74-75 billion, so the $78 billion guidance is $30-40 billion higher than the market’s implied expectations.

Nvidia’s stock price surged over 3.5% after hours, reaching a high of $203, then retreated to around $194-195, still up about 2%. Based on this increase, Nvidia’s market cap added roughly $100 billion in a single day.

Additionally, the data center business experienced explosive growth.

• Q4 data center revenue: $62.3 billion, up 22% quarter-over-quarter, 75% year-over-year
• Hyperscalers account for just over 50% of data center revenue; the remaining 50% comes from enterprise clients, AI model companies, sovereign AI projects, etc.
• Network business quarterly revenue: $11 billion, up 34% quarter-over-quarter, a staggering 263% year-over-year, driven by Blackwell and GB200 system deployments fueling NVLink interconnect architecture demand

CFO Colette Kress revealed at the earnings call: The four major cloud giants (Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft) have raised their capital expenditure forecasts by about $120 billion since the start of the year, approaching $700 billion.

CEO Jensen Huang emphasized: “Computing demand is growing exponentially, and the inflection point for Agentic AI has arrived.”

He highlighted three trends:

1. Training and inference demands are growing exponentially together, not at the expense of each other, but in a supercharged manner;
2. Grace Blackwell chips are the reigning inference king, reducing per-token costs by an order of magnitude, with Vera Rubin further extending the lead;
3. Corporate adoption of AI agents is soaring, with clients racing to invest in AI compute power—“this is the factory driving the AI industrial revolution and the engine of their future growth.”

Huang also disclosed that Physical AI has already contributed $6 billion in revenue for Nvidia. Autonomous vehicle fleets (Waymo, Tesla, Uber, WeRide, Zoox) are expanding from thousands in 2025 to millions over the next decade, creating a “market worth hundreds of billions of dollars.”

Nvidia explicitly stated that the $78 billion Q1 guidance “does not include any revenue from data center computing in China.” This is a key detail, as Nvidia proactively excludes uncertainties in the Chinese market, providing a “conservative lower bound.”

If US-China trade relations improve and China reopens H200 orders, there is potential upside beyond the $78 billion baseline. According to CFO Colette Kress, if sales to China normalize, the Chinese market could contribute up to $50 billion annually.

US Stocks: Tech Rally, Nasdaq Leads

Wednesday (February 25) US market close:

• Dow Jones Industrial Average: +307.65 points, +0.63%, closing at 49,482.15
• S&P 500: +0.81%, closing at 6,946.13
• Nasdaq: +1.26%, closing at 23,152.08

Nvidia rose 1.4 intraday, providing strong support for the broader market. Software stocks continued their rebound, rising for the second consecutive day.

After Nvidia’s earnings release, US stock futures surged across the board:

• S&P 500 futures: up about 1.5%
• Nasdaq futures: up over 2%
• The $700 billion ETF tracking the S&P 500 (SPY): up over 1% after hours

Other AI-related companies also surged after hours: TSMC up 0.45% (continued higher after hours); Dell Technologies up 3.22%; Micron Technology up 2.63%.

Deepwater Asset Management partner Gene Munster stated on X: “The AI infrastructure trade is alive and well.”

Crypto Market: Circle Earnings Boost Confidence, Bitcoin Surges 7% Past $69,000

If Nvidia’s earnings reignited faith in AI, then Circle’s earnings injected adrenaline into the crypto market.

On Wednesday, stablecoin issuer Circle Internet Group released its Q4 FY2025 and full-year financials.

The report showed that by the end of 2025, USDC circulation reached $75.3 billion, up 72% year-over-year; Q4 on-chain trading volume hit $11.9 trillion, a 247% increase. Financially, total revenue and reserve income for 2025 totaled $2.7 billion, up 64%; Q4 revenue was $770 million, up 77%.

Circle’s stock soared over 30%, hitting a recent high and becoming the most eye-catching star in the crypto sector that day.

The significance of this report goes far beyond a single company’s performance; it is a barometer of the health of the entire crypto infrastructure and market confidence.

The market immediately responded.

Bitcoin started gaining momentum during Wednesday’s UTC midnight hours, rising over 7% in 24 hours, from around $63,000 to a peak of $69,361, marking the best single-day performance in three weeks. This is Bitcoin’s strongest daily rebound since February and signals a shift 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 the foundation of infrastructure—they are:

The medium of exchange: Almost all crypto trades involve stablecoins as counterparties;

The liquidity vehicle: Funds flow between CEX, DEX, DeFi protocols via stablecoins;

The confidence indicator: Growing stablecoin circulation = capital inflow into crypto markets; shrinking circulation = capital withdrawal.

Circle’s report shows USDC circulation surged, a clear signal: funds are still flowing in.

On the technical side, RSI rebounded from oversold territory to neutral, indicating market sentiment is healing. However, Bitcoin remains within the range of the past three weeks ($63,000–$70,000), not yet breaking through key resistance levels.

Analysts warn that this rebound is more like a “relief rally” rather than a trend reversal. CF Benchmarks analysts believe that Bitcoin falling below $75,000 over the weekend may have completed its “deleveraging sequence” since October 2025, and is at a critical inflection point.

If it cannot hold above $74,000 (April’s low), a deeper decline could ensue. But if it breaks above $70,000 and stabilizes, it could challenge higher resistance zones of $75,000–$80,000.