Nvidia posts record quarterly revenue and projects strong outlook

Artificial intelligence bellwether’s results comes as DeepSeek arrival upends AI market

Nvidia on Wednesday beat forecasts for its latest quarterly results, posting a robust outlook after upstart DeepSeek upended the broader artificial intelligence market.

Nvidia reported revenue of $39.3 billion for the fourth-quarter of its last fiscal year ended January 26, compared to the FactSet estimate of $38.1 billion. That was up 12 per cent on a quarterly basis and 78 per cent year on year. Net income rose to $22.09 billion, up 72 per cent year on year from October 27 to January 27.

But that revenue growth marked a continued slowdown from the previous four quarters, during which sales increased by 94 per cent, 122 per cent, 262 per cent and 265 per cent, respectively. It was also the company’s third consecutive quarter with more than $30 billion in revenue.

The company reported $0.89 adjusted earnings a share compared to the estimates of $0.85. Earnings for each share rose to 78 cents from 37 cents in the same period last year.

Nvidia's revenue rose 78 per cent in the quarter to $39.3 billion, while it increased 114 per cent to $130.5 billion for the full fiscal year.

Nvidia said it delivered $11 billion of Blackwell revenue in the fourth quarter, the fastest product increase in its history.

"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 an earnings release.

“We’ve successfully ramped up the massive-scale production of Blackwell AI supercomputers, achieving billions of dollars in sales in its first quarter. AI is advancing at light speed as agentic AI and physical AI set the stage for the next wave of AI to revolutionise the largest industries."

Nvidia is now forecasting first-quarter revenue of $43 billion, plus or minus 2 per cent. Gross margins are expected to be 70.6 per cent and 71 per cent, plus or minus 50 basis points.

Nvidia shares were choppy in after-hours trading since closing up 3.67 per cent to $131.28 a share.

Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang says he welcomes the breakthrough made by China's DeepSeek earlier this year. AP

Nvidia's market value reached $3.215 trillion at the close of trading on Wednesday, ahead of Microsoft ($2.971 trillion), Amazon ($2.271 trillion) and Alphabet ($2.116 trillion), and just behind Apple ($3.610 trillion).

Nvidia, whose stock has surged more than 1,800 per cent in the past five years, has helped to drive the AI boom since ChatGPT made its debut in 2022. But Magnificent Seven stocks took a major hit this this year after the overnight sensation of Chinese startup DeepSeek, which upended the broader AI market in January.

The company in January released its DeepSeekR1 model, which could rival OpenAI's ChatGPT on significantly lower costs. The announcement wiped off nearly $1 trillion in technology stocks, including a nearly $600 billion drop in value for Nvidia.

Shares in the chip maker are down nearly 5 per cent this year.

Amid DeepSeek roiling the AI market, Mr Huang met US President Donald Trump at the White House. The visit came shortly after chief executives at OpenAI, Oracle and Softbank announced an investment of up to $500 billion in a joint venture known as Stargate to develop AI infrastructure in the US.

UAE company MGX is also an initial equity funder. Nvidia, Arm, Microsoft, Oracle and OpenAI are the initial technology partners in the project.

Before Mr Trump's inauguration, UAE company Damac Properties pledged a $20 billion investment to build data centres in the US. Emirati billionaire and Damac Properties chairman Hussain Sajwani said at the time that the company could increase its investment under the right market conditions.