Nvidia $NVDA (NVDA) delivered another record quarter and raised outlook on strong demand for its Blackwell artificial intelligence chips, confirming that Big Tech’s big spending on AI will continue, analysts said.
The AI chipmaker reported record revenue and set first quarter guidance above expectations
Nvidia $NVDA (NVDA) delivered another record quarter and raised outlook on strong demand for its Blackwell artificial intelligence chips, confirming that Big Tech’s big spending on AI will continue, analysts said.
The chipmaker reported revenue of $39.3 billion for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025 — a 78% increase from the previous year, and above the consensus of $38.1 billion. Fiscal first quarter guidance was set at $43 billion, plus or minus 2% — also above Wall Street’s expectations of $42 billion.
“It was logical to be concerned about the ramping of Blackwell, but we have now successfully ramped Blackwell,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during a post-earnings appearance on CNBC (CMCSA).
Huang added that he believes Nvidia is “successfully behind the air pocket” in demand over which investors raised concerns as customers transitioned from Hopper to Blackwell.
“We’re going to have a good quarter next quarter. And we’ve got a fairly good pipeline of demand for Blackwell,” Huang said.
Jefferies (JEF) analysts said in a note on Thursday that “[t]he supply chain should continue to improve,” and that they “see no signs of demand issues,” for Blackwell.
Ahead of earnings results, analysts were optimistic that the chipmaker would beat expectations and raise its outlook as it ramps up Blackwell production — despite shockwaves from Chinese AI startup DeepSeek.
“The recent setback in Nvidia’s stock from DeepSeek and the narrative that AI demand would decline proved unfounded as customers continue to race to scale AI infrastructure, largely with Nvidia chips,” Sean Sun, a portfolio manager at Thornburg Investment Management, said in comments shared with Quartz.
Richard Windsor, founder of research firm Radio Free Mobile, also said he doesn’t think DeepSeek will “clobber demand for Nvidia’s data centre chips” in comments shared with Quartz.
The chipmaker’s expectations for the current fiscal year “look to be about right which combined with the good visibility that I think the company has means that there will be few surprises this year,” Windsor said.
Meanwhile, concerns by investors over Nvidia’s top customers designing their own custom chips “appear overdone,” Sun said. “Nvidia’s ecosystem advantages and software stack remain formidable barriers to entry.”
On its post-earnings call, Nvidia said the reasoning AI models over which firms such as OpenAI and Google $GOOGL are competing “can require 100x more compute per task compared to one-shot inferences.”
The company “is uniquely positioned to capture this exponential growth,” Sun said.
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