Nvidia ($NVDA) and Micron ($MU) Drive Over One-Third of S&P 500 Q3 Earnings Growth

Nvidia ($NVDA) and Micron Technology ($MU) are projected to deliver more than a third of the S&P 500's third-quarter earnings-per-share growth, according to analyses from Goldman Sachs and FactSet. Overall S&P 500 earnings growth is forecast at 29.5% year-over-year—marking an eighth consecutive quarter of double-digit expansion—driven heavily by an increasingly top-heavy semiconductor and artificial intelligence infrastructure footprint.
The concentration metrics highlight stark divergence between AI hardware leaders and the broader equity market:
- Disproportionate Index Impact: Nvidia and Micron alone are on track to generate more aggregate earnings growth than the bottom 490 companies in the index combined, with roughly two-thirds of total S&P 500 profit expansion concentrated in just 10 mega-cap firms.
- Micron's Data Center Tailwinds: Data center revenue surged to 40% of total quarterly sales as revenue rose nearly fivefold year-over-year, supported by 26 long-term customer agreements and manufacturing capacity committed through 2027 amid an AI memory shortage expected to persist into 2028.
- Nvidia Scale and Supply Bottlenecks: Following second-quarter revenue of $96.2 billion, Nvidia guided third-quarter top-line revenue to roughly $108 billion against a cloud industry backlog exceeding $2 trillion, though management flagged memory pricing and capacity constraints as near-term gross margin pressure points.
- Concentration Risk: While overall AI infrastructure players drive more than half of index earnings growth, high-bandwidth memory expansion and peak adjusted gross margins introduce potential oversupply and crowded-trade risks should end-market hyperscaler CapEx decelerate.