The author of best-selling book Chip War explains why efforts to rely less on companies like Nvidia and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) won’t work.
Nvidia says it finished its fiscal year with record high revenue of $130.5 billion (NZ$229b), driven by demand for its chips to power artificial intelligence in data centres.
The California-based juggernaut reported a net income of $22b on an unprecedented $39.3b in revenue in a blockbuster fourth quarter thatended in late January.
Nvidia has successfully ramped up “massive-scale” production of its new top-of-the-line Blackwell processors for powering artificial intelligence, logging billions in sales in its first quarter on the market, according to Huang.
“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 co-founder and chief executive Jensen Huang said in an earnings release.
Nvidia projected revenue of $43b in the current fiscal quarter, topping analyst expectations.
The earnings figures appeared to calm investor concerns that import tariffs and the surprise debut of lower-cost AI model DeepSeek from China signal less profitable days ahead for the Silicon Valley star.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang says "AI is advancing at light speed". Photo / AFP
Nvidia shares were up more than 2% in after-market trades.
“Despite market jitters over DeepSeek’s efficient model and early Blackwell deployment challenges, Nvidia’s results reaffirm that it continues to lead the AI landscape, sidelining sceptics,” said Emarketer technology analyst Jacob Bourne.
“Competitors are making strides but frontier models require the kind of advanced computing resources that Nvidia provides.”
The AI boom propelled Nvidia stock prices until a steep sell-off in January triggered by the sudden success of DeepSeek.
China’s DeepSeek unveiled its R1 chatbot, which it claims can match the capacity of top US AI products for a fraction of their costs.
Nvidia high-end GPUs (graphics processing units) are in hot demand by tech giants building data centres to power artificial intelligence, and a low-cost option could weaken the Silicon Valley chip star’s business.
High-end versions of Nvidia’s chips face US export restrictions to China, part of Washington’s efforts to slow its Asian adversary’s advancement in the strategic technology.
The policy’s effectiveness came under scrutiny in January when DeepSeek achieved widespread adoption of its latest AI technology, developed using unrestricted lower-powered Nvidia chips.
Nvidia relies heavily on Taiwan’s TSMC for the production of its graphics processing units, raising concerns it faces geopolitical risks.
