AI stocks like Nvidia (NVDA) have taken haymakers for much of the year, with investors firmly in “show-me” mode.
Circular financing, ballooning hyperscaler spending, and questions over risk-reward continue weighing down the market.
Yet one overlooked name tied to that buildout emerged as a standout.
AI power-infrastructure stock Bloom Energy (BE) reported Q2 2026 results on July 28 against a demanding Wall Street setup, according to Yahoo Finance.
What followed wasn’t just a beat. It was a result strong enough to revamp expectations around the pace of its AI-driven power growth.
The onsite-power specialist breezed past both its top- and bottom-line forecasts, backing a view that surging data-center demand is translating into tangible financial momentum.
Bloom’s blowout suggests not only that the AI trade might be weakening, but also that value might be shifting toward the businesses supplying the electricity needed to keep it running.
Is Bloom Energy really growing faster than Nvidia?
Based purely on percentage growth, the answer is an unequivocal yes.
Bloom Energy’s Q2 results jumped 166% year over year to a record $1.07 billion, compared to Nvidia’s 85% growth to $81.6 billion in its latest quarter.
Bloom’s product sales were even stronger, climbing 215.4% to $935.4 million as AI data-center operators flocked to secure onsite electricity.
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The real star of the show, though, was its bottom line.
Adjusted EPS surged to 78 cents, nearly double analysts’ 41 cents estimate, while sales exceeded the $826.1 million consensus by roughly 29%. Non-GAAP gross margin expanded 604 basis points to 34.3%, and non-GAAP operating margin jumped from 7.1% to 22.5%. Operating cash flow also swung from a $213.1 million outflow to a $226.4 million inflow.
Guidance arguably stood out even more.
Bloom lifted 2026 revenue guidance from $3.4 billion to $3.8 billion to $3.9 billion to $4.2 billion, implying 100% growth at the midpoint. The midpoint of adjusted EPS guidance rose roughly 32% to $2.70, while operating-income guidance increased to $800 million to $900 million.
Still, for investors to treat Bloom Energy as “the next Nvidia” would be a big stretch.
Nvidia generated roughly 77 times Bloom’s quarterly sales, adding nearly $37.6 billion in year-over-year sales, versus Bloom’s $664 million increase. Nvidia also carries a roughly 75% non-GAAP gross margin and guided for $91 billion next quarter’s revenue.
Bloom is growing faster from a much smaller base, but its year-to-date returns have made it a clear standout.
How does Bloom Energy fit into Nvidia’s AI boom?
Bloom Energy is best described as an energy-infrastructure stock with significant AI exposure, unlike a conventional AI business.
It doesn’t design chips, train models, or develop software. Instead, it develops fuel-cell systems that convert natural gas, biogas, or hydrogen into electricity on site. Those systems allow data centers to quickly secure reliable power without having to wait years for new grid connections.
Bloom says its modular systems could be deployed in as little as 90 days, scaled through 325-kilowatt building blocks, and deliver up to 99.999% availability. In simple terms, it’s a fast AI power solution backed by high reliability and scalability.
It makes sense, since AI’s biggest bottleneck isn’t chip availability, but energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy estimates data centers consumed 4.4% of U.S. electricity in 2023, with that share expected to reach 6.7% to 12% by 2028.
In fact, Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk pointed out that AI’s enormous power and cooling requirements might eventually favor orbital data centers.
In a January 2026 conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said, “The lowest-cost place to put AI will be space. And that will be true within 2 years, maybe 3 at latest.”
That created a major opening for the likes of Bloom Energy.
Which energy sources could help scale AI?
- Nuclear power: Delivers dependable, round-the-clock power with low operational emissions, which makes it tailor-made for AI data centers.
- Solar power: Offers increasingly cheap electricity, although batteries or backup generation is needed for continuous computing.
- Wind power: Can supply tremendous volumes of clean energy when paired with storage and stronger transmission networks.
- Geothermal energy: Provides steady, low-carbon baseload energy without the intermittency of solar or wind.
- Space-based energy: Orbital data centers can eventually tap near-continuous solar power while slashing land, grid, and cooling constraints on Earth.
Why are Bloom Energy and Nvidia both under pressure?
Bloom Energy stock has comfortably outperformed Nvidia over a longer time horizon, rising 100.5% year to date versus Nvidia’s roughly 5.24% gain. Over a 6-month period, Bloom has gained 5.3% over six months against Nvidia’s 2% jump.
Yet Bloom has dropped 23% in one week and 31% in one month, compared with Nvidia’s 7.4% five-day decline and 0.7% monthly gain, according to Seeking Alpha and Barchart.
With Bloom, the sell-off is more reflective of profit-taking and valuation compression after its momentous run, despite posting bombastic quarterly results.
While Bloom is also exposed to broader AI concerns, Nvidia faces additional risks surrounding circular AI financing, hyperscaler returns, and growing Chinese competition.
For perspective, Bloom Energy stock trades at over 76 times forward non-GAAP earnings, 255% higher than the sector median, Seeking Alpha confirmed.
In comparison, Nvidia is trading far more attractively, at 22 times forward non-GAAP earnings, 50% lower than its 5-year average, according to Seeking Alpha.
Major Bloom Energy Wall Street price targets
Across 26 analysts, Bloom’s average target is approximately $286.20, with estimates ranging from $70 to $390, according to Investing.com.
- UBS: Buy, $350; raised from $322 on July 1 following the expanded Brookfield financing agreement.
- JPMorgan: Overweight, $346; raised from $267 on July 21, although this is a December 2027 target.
- RBC Capital: Outperform, $335; most recently reiterated on June 10.
- Morgan Stanley: Overweight, $310; reiterated after Bloom’s Q2 earnings, with estimates adjusted for additional second-half shipments.
- Barclays: Equal Weight, $254; bumped from $177 following Bloom’s previous earnings and guidance increase.
Source: Yahoo Finance, Investing.com
Bloom management says AI demand is becoming a durable advantage
Bloom Energy’s management argued that the blowout quarterly results represented a lot more than a temporary surge in AI-related orders.
CEO KR Sridhar said customers are signing longer-term agreements, Investing.com noted. This has pushed backlog growth ahead of sales, while major U.S. hyperscalers, along with more than a dozen neoclouds, AI labs, and colocation operators, have approved Bloom’s technology.
Speed remains the heart of that pitch.
“Bloom will not be your bottleneck,” Sridhar told investors after supplying Oracle’s data center within 55 days of initial engagement.
“We deliver power at AI speed,” he added. The argument is that every month saved on power deployment enables customers to start monetizing costly AI chips a lot sooner.
Perhaps the more impressive development, however, may be Bloom’s operating leverage.
“Revenue grew 166%, while operating expenses grew just 48%,” CFO Simon Edwards noted. That led to a bump in operating margin to reach 22.5%, while free cash flow hit $175 million.
Management also said that manufacturing capacity and supply chains aren’t constraining growth, while Brookfield’s expansion of its financing framework from $5 billion to $25 billion offers customers sufficient capital to fund deployments, Investing.com reported.
