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Nvidia reported a nearly 70 per cent surge in quarterly revenues, as the boom in spending on artificial intelligence chips continued despite export controls that have dented the chip company’s China sales.
Nvidia on Wednesday reported revenue of $44.1bn for the quarter to April 27, up 69 per cent year on year and above Wall Street’s expectations of $43.3bn.
But the US chip designer at the heart of a global spending spree on the infrastructure powering AI said it expected revenue of $45bn for the current quarter, plus or minus 2 per cent, meaning it could come in slightly below Bloomberg consensus estimates of $45.5bn.
Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said the company was seeing “incredibly strong” demand for its products.
The company is navigating the impact of US President Donald Trump’s trade war with China, as well as new export restrictions in April that have prevented it from selling AI chips designed specifically for the China market. The group took a $4.5bn charge in the April quarter as a result of those curbs, and said it had already missed out on an additional $2.5bn in sales. Its guidance for the current period reflected an $8bn loss in revenue in lost sales to China.
Nvidia shares were up almost 4 per cent in after-hours trading immediately following the announcement.
Net income jumped by 26 per cent to $18.8bn, slightly below estimates of $19.5bn.
Adjusted gross margins — a measure of profitability that excludes operating expenses and the $4.5bn April charge — were 71.3 per cent, in line with the 71 per cent the company said it expected at its last earnings report in February and what Wall Street had been expecting.
The company’s gross margin outlook for the current quarter was slightly above estimates at 72 per cent, compared with the 71.7 per cent expected by analysts.
Nvidia’s margins slipped earlier this year with the company citing the transition to its more complex and higher-cost Blackwell chip systems, which launched last year. Nvidia and its suppliers have recently resolved technical issues with Blackwell servers that threatened to delay the rollout.
Ahead of the results, analysts had warned that new China sales restrictions would bring margins down further for the quarter.
The company is contemplating how to redesign its chips to serve the Chinese market while complying with the latest US export controls.
