Nvidia’s (NVDA+3.34%) revenue and outlook topped analysts’ expectations, driven by demand for its new Blackwell chips. The stock fell in after-hours trading after closing up 3.7%.
The chipmaker reported revenue of $39.3 billion for its fiscal fourth quarter — a 78% increase from the previous year and an all-time high. Consensus had been for $38.1 billion. Net income was $22 billion for earnings per share of 89 cents, also beats. Nvidia’s full-year revenue more than doubled year over year to $130.5 billion.
Revenue guidance for the first quarter of the current fiscal year was set at $43 billion, plus or minus 2% — also above Wall Street’s expectations of $42 billion.
“Demand for Blackwell is amazing as reasoning AI adds another scaling law — increasing compute for training makes models smarter and increasing compute for long thinking makes the answer smarter,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in a statement.
Ahead of the earnings, analysts were optimistic that the chipmaker would beat expectations and raise its outlook as it ramps up production of its Blackwell chips — despite shockwaves from Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek.
In December, Hangzhou-based DeepSeek released a model it said cost just $5.6 million to train and develop on Nvidia’s reduced-capability H800 chips. This cheaper but still powerful reasoning model spooked investors, causing Nvidia’s stock to plunge 17%, wiping out nearly $600 billion in value — a record loss for a U.S. company.
“Nvidia’s upcoming earnings will crush the DeepSeek anxiety,” Kevin Cook, senior stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research, told Quartz ahead of the results. The company dominates “the technology stack that enterprises want and the next stacks they don’t even know they need yet.”
Encouraging updates on production and shipments of the Blackwell platform will probably move the stock, Kunjan Sobhani, lead semiconductor analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence, told Quartz ahead of earnings. Investors are wary of a potential “air pocket” in growth between the first and second quarters of the current fiscal year as customers move to Blackwell from Hopper, he said.
“That is the spot when the Hopper shipments could really come down, and the Blackwell ramp — from a quarter to quarter perspective — might not be enough to show significant sequential growth,” Sobhani said, adding that Blackwell could “catch up in the second half.”
For Nvidia’s reputation and valuation, “the sequential expectations matter,” Sobhani said. “If they say something which agitates this sort of concern further, that could imply temporary volatility in the sentiment and the stock.”
Nvidia may also soon face challenges in China due to tighter U.S. export controls on chips. The Trump administration is preparing to expand on existing chip curbs in coordination with US allies including Japan and the Netherlands, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.
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