AI chip giant Nvidia reports blockbuster revenue

NEW YORK

Nvidia said it finished its fiscal year with record high revenue of $130.5 billion, driven by demand for its chips to power artificial intelligence in data centers.

The California-based juggernaut reported a net income of $22 billion on an unprecedented $39.3 billion in revenue in a blockbuster fourth quarter that ended in late January.

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.

"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 skeptics," 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.

DeepSeek unveiled its R1 chatbot, which it claims can match the capacity of top U.S. AI products for a fraction of their costs.

Nvidia high-end GPUs (graphics processing units) are in hot demand by tech giants building datacenters to power artificial intelligence, and a low-cost option could weaken the Silicon Valley chip star's business.

Nvidia relies heavily on Taiwan's TSMC for the production of its graphics processing units, raising concerns it faces geopolitical risks.