Nvidia’s AI chip sales surge boosts revenues by 80%

US technology giant Nvidia’s profits and revenues rose in the last quarter as the rush by technology companies to build artificial intelligence infrastructure continued to fuel growing demand for its advanced chips.

Sales rose 78% from a year earlier to $39.3 billion, topping estimates of $38.3 billion in a Bloomberg survey. The group expects to generate $43 billion in revenue this quarter.

Nvidia has been among the best-performing stocks on Wall Street over the past two years, helping lift the broader market as investors bet it would be one of the main beneficiaries of the rapid growth of artificial intelligence.

But shares have slumped this year after Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek claimed it could train models on less advanced chips than rivals such as US-based OpenAI.

Chief Executive Jensen Huang fended off those concerns on Wednesday, saying there was “incredible” demand for Nvidia’s latest generation of Blackwell chips.

Data center revenues nearly doubled in the quarter ended January 26 as big tech companies rapidly developed their AI offerings. Blackwell generated $11 billion in revenue this quarter.

‘DeepSeek ignited global enthusiasm’

Huang specifically mentioned DeepSeek in his call with analysts, saying that new “reasoning” models such as DeepSeek’s R1 consume a far greater amount of AI chip power than their predecessors and that its sudden arrival on the scene “ignited global enthusiasm” for the technology.

“DeepSeek threats or disruptions were not evident in Blackwell’s chip demand or data center revenues,” said Dec Mullarkey, managing director at SLC Management. “Earnings were not a boom, but neither did they show any glaring vulnerabilities.”

Blackwell’s rollout hit some initial snags, with manufacturing issues and reports that some iterations of the chip were overheating in servers. But Wednesday’s results showed that the transition from the previous chip architecture went smoothly.

Net revenue came in at $22.1 billion, up 80% from the same quarter a year earlier, although operating expenses rose almost 50%.

Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress stated that profit margins fell due to the transition to “more complex and higher cost” Blackwell systems.

The company’s shares were little changed in after-hours volatile trading in New York and rose almost 4% in the regular session.

Tariff threat

Analysts had also pointed to uncertainties ahead of Wednesday’s announcement about how possible new US export controls and tariffs could affect Nvidia’s trajectory.

Nvidia is exposed to geopolitical tensions between Washington and Beijing.

In the waning days of the Joe Biden administration, a new “artificial intelligence proliferation” export control regime was also announced, aimed at making it harder for China to use other countries to circumvent US export restrictions on artificial intelligence chips.

Nvidia took the rare step of publicly criticizing the rules, saying they would weaken competitiveness and undermine innovation. But Donald Trump’s administration has given little sign of backing down from its attempts to block China’s access to high-tech chips. The president has threatened new tariffs on semiconductors from Taiwan.

“It’s a bit of an unknown at this point until we have a better understanding of what the US government’s plan is,” Kress said of the tariffs.