I gave Claude the SEC EDGAR link to NVIDIA’s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 25, 2026, and asked it to use a web-reading tool to pull out six things. One of the answers was that total revenue was “not found.”
NVIDIA’s revenue was in the filing; the tool had not retrieved it. The other answers needed checking too.
This post is about research method. It is not a recommendation to buy or sell NVIDIA or any other security. See the Disclaimer.
The six questions, and the first answers
The questions covered several parts of the filing: the business description at the front, the risk factors in the middle, and management’s discussion of results further back. They asked for the reporting segments and their revenue, total revenue for two years, any customers above 10% of revenue, the first risk factors, the China export-control charges, and gross margin.
Here is how the first answers compared with the filing:
| Question | First answer | What the filing says |
|---|---|---|
| Reporting segments | Two: Compute & Networking, Graphics | Correct |
| H20 export-control charge | $4.5 billion in Q1 of fiscal 2026 | Correct (Item 1, p. 10) |
| Total revenue | “Not found” | $215.9 billion, up 65% (Item 7, p. 37) |
| Gross margin | “Not found” | 71.1% vs. 75.0% a year earlier (Item 7, p. 37) |
| Customers above 10% | “Not found”; only a general statement about relying on a few partners | Two direct customers at 22% and 14% of revenue (Item 1A, p. 23) |
In the table, the correct answers are about the front of the filing; the “not found” ones are about sections further back. The table shows five of the six requested topics; it does not include the risk-factor answer.
What happened
At the very end of the tool’s output was a short note: the response had used only the first 100,000 characters of the page. When I opened the same filing in a browser, the main document’s text came to about 345,000 characters. By that comparison, the answers were built from roughly the first 29% of the filing (an approximation, since the tool and the browser count characters differently), which stops partway through the risk factors. The MD&A and the financial statements were outside what that response covered.
The answers themselves said “not found.” The coverage limit appeared only in that closing note. Read quickly, “not found” sounds like “the company does not disclose this.” For the customer question, that would have been exactly backwards.
The same questions, with the full text
For the second round, Claude opened the filing in a browser on my computer, which loaded the complete main-document text, and searched that text for each answer. This time every answer had to come with the figure as written, the Item, and the printed page number. Each line was checked against the filing and then re-checked independently by a second AI tool, Codex.
| Fact | Figure in the filing | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Total revenue, fiscal 2026 vs. 2025 | $215,938 million vs. $130,497 million (up 65%) | Item 7, p. 37 |
| Gross margin | 71.1% vs. 75.0% (down 3.9 percentage points) | Item 7, p. 37 |
| Compute & Networking revenue | $193,479 million vs. $116,193 million (up 67%) | Item 7, p. 40 |
| Graphics revenue | $22,459 million vs. $14,304 million (up 57%) | Item 7, p. 40 |
| Customer concentration | One direct customer 22% of revenue, another 14% | Item 1A, p. 23 |
| Revenue from customers headquartered outside the U.S. | 31% of fiscal 2026 revenue | Item 1A, p. 19 (definition: Item 7, p. 41) |
| H20 export-control charge | $4.5 billion in Q1 of fiscal 2026, for excess inventory and purchase obligations | Item 1, p. 10 |
The two reported customer shares, 22% and 14%, add up to 36% of revenue. The first answer had reported them as “not found.”
The geographic figure requires care. NVIDIA measures geographic revenue by where its direct customers are headquartered, which can differ from where products ship or who ends up using them. The 31% is accurate; it is not a measure of sales to foreign end users. The filing also gives management’s explanation for the lower gross margin, a shift in its data center offering plus the H20 charge (Item 7, p. 37). I record that as management’s view, separately from the numbers.
The method I use now
Start from the filing itself. Search the company on SEC EDGAR, filter for form type 10-K, and open the main document. Note the fiscal year end and filing date; NVIDIA’s fiscal year does not follow the calendar. Investor.gov’s 10-K guide (linked below) explains each Item, though parts of it predate recent SEC rule changes and it is not a complete checklist.
Check coverage before trusting any gap. The prompt below includes these coverage checks. Two traps are worth knowing: a tool can see the table of contents, or the final page, and still miss the body text in between; and in NVIDIA’s filing, Item 8 points to financial statements elsewhere in the report, so seeing the Item 8 heading proves little. If coverage is incomplete, ask about one section at a time or upload the filing as a file.
Require a location for every answer, then search the filing for each figure yourself. A plain Ctrl+F (Cmd+F on a Mac) can miss a number because of formatting, so confirm the value, units, period, and surrounding definition, note any unit conversions, and mark figures you cannot trace as unverified. Keep each verified fact on one line with its Item and page. I plan to use that log when next year’s 10-K comes out.
The prompt
Replace the bracketed parts. It works best with the full filing attached, one section at a time if necessary.
You are helping me read [COMPANY]'s Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended [DATE].
Coverage first:
1. Tell me how much of the document you can see. Report any truncation,
length limit, or missing section, including notes you would normally
put at the end.
2. Tell me the last Item heading and page number you can see in the body
text (not the table of contents).
3. Confirm whether you can see the actual financial statements and notes,
not just the Item 8 heading.
These are initial checks only. If coverage is incomplete, say so before
answering anything else.
Then answer the questions below. For every answer:
- Give the figure exactly as written, with its units and reporting period.
- Give the Item number and the printed page number.
- If you cannot find it, say "not found in the part of the filing I can see,"
not just "not found."
- Do not estimate, round, or calculate anything I did not ask for.
- Label management's explanations as management's view.
Questions:
[YOUR QUESTIONS]Test limits: this used one filing and one web-reading tool, and other tools have different limits. Page numbers are the ones printed in the HTML filing; a PDF copy may differ, and separately filed exhibits were not included. Please report errors through the Contact page.
