Nvidia's $150B Buyback Is the Largest in History

Nvidia announced a record $150 billion buyback increase on September 28, lifting its total authorization to $235 billion, but chip stocks still slid.

Nvidia's board authorized an additional $150 billion under its existing share repurchase program on September 28, 2026, raising the total remaining authorization to $235 billion — the largest share repurchase authorization increase in history, according to NVIDIA's own announcement. The company said it expects to execute the remaining program through fiscal year 2028. CEO Jensen Huang framed the move as a bet on a 'once-in-a-generation platform shift to AI and accelerated computing,' saying Nvidia's cash generation lets it both invest in the transformation and return capital to shareholders. The authorization follows a $80 billion increase four months earlier, as reported by The Seattle Times.

A buyback of this scale is unprecedented, but the market's response was strikingly lukewarm. The Seattle Times notes the stock price has skyrocketed amid the AI boom, making Nvidia the most valuable public company in the world at roughly $5 trillion in market capitalization. Yet Seeking Alpha reports chip stocks fell broadly on Monday even as Nvidia gained 3%, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index (SOX) dropping 2.6%. The disconnect suggests investors see the buyback as a signal of cash abundance rather than a catalyst — authorization alone does not guarantee an aggressive buying pace, and management controls the timing.

24/7 Wall St. reports that Nvidia returned a record $26 billion to shareholders in the second quarter of fiscal 2027 — $20 billion through repurchases and $6 billion in dividends at $0.25 per share — per CFO Colette Kress. The company's cash flow statement shows about $40.1 billion of repurchases in fiscal 2026 and $33.7 billion the year before, meaning the combined pot equals roughly five to six years of buying at last year's pace. Q2 free cash flow reached $21.34 billion, up 58.43% year over year, and Kress said Nvidia has returned 60% of free cash flow year to date against a 50% target.

Jim Cramer, who spent months demanding a bigger buyback, conditioned his enthusiasm on execution, telling CNBC per 24/7 Wall St. that 'if they're active and in there every day, it will change the trajectory of the stock.' The bull case rests on growth, not maturity: 24/7 Wall St. notes Q2 revenue hit $96.22 billion, up 105.8% year over year, beating the $92.07 billion consensus, with guidance for $108 billion in Q3 and roughly 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028. The classic worry — that buybacks arrive when growth fades, as with Apple — does not yet fit Nvidia's numbers.

24/7 Wall St. highlights real friction: Cramer noted Nvidia sometimes cannot buy back stock in the last ten minutes of a session because zero-day options activity blocks the stock. Cash also competes with $279 billion in supply obligations and nearly $50 billion invested in frontier AI labs. The buyback follows a $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face earlier in September, per Shacknews, underscoring how capital returns now coexist with aggressive strategic spending. With 24.147 billion shares outstanding and a trailing P/E of 45, the per-share impact depends heavily on how quickly authorization converts into repurchases.

The next checkpoint is the fiscal third-quarter earnings report, where Nvidia has guided to $108.0 billion in revenue; 24/7 Wall St. points to the repurchase line in that filing as the test of whether the company is buying at a daily pace rather than dribbling out capital. The $0.25 quarterly dividend pays on October 1, 2026. Meanwhile, The Seattle Times notes Nvidia told investors in August that projected Q3 revenue would rise 90% year over year, an indication the AI boom retains momentum — meaning the buyback is a supplement to growth, not yet a substitute for it.