Nvidia's financial report: Nvidia's revenue in Q4 2025 was US$39.331 billion, a year-on-year increase of 78%

The data center unit, Nvidia's biggest revenue source by far, had sales of $35.6 billion. That beat the average estimate of $34.1 billion. Gaming-related sales -- once Nvidia's core business -- came in at $2.5 billion, compared with analysts' average estimate of $3.02 billion. Automotive revenue was $570 million.

Although the company beat analysts' sales expectations in the fiscal fourth quarter, it was the smallest miss since February 2023. Meanwhile, the company's earnings increase was the smallest since November 2022, according to compiled data. Nvidia's profit margin growth also showed signs of slowing. Q4 gross margin was 73%, compared with 74.6% in the previous quarter and 76% in the same period last year.

Nvidia has only missed analysts' quarterly revenue estimates once in the past five years. In recent quarters, the company has beaten expectations by more than 10%, setting a high bar for its performance. Its data center division alone currently generates more revenue than its rivals Intel (INTC.US) and AMD (AMD.US) combined.

Nvidia has played a central role in the global artificial intelligence arms race and has become one of the world’s most valuable companies. Rarely has a company’s earnings report been so closely watched by Wall Street and seen as a make-or-break moment for the entire market.

Nvidia's importance stems from two main factors: its massive valuation, which means its stock price can have a significant impact on the entire market, including the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average, and its role in artificial intelligence, a field that plays a major role in overall U.S. economic growth.

Ahead of the earnings release, Dan Ives, managing director and senior equity research analyst at Wedbush Securities, said it would be a “big day” for global markets seeking to “gauge the trajectory of demand for the artificial intelligence revolution.”

Nvidia’s earnings are widely viewed as a barometer of the economy, which has grown over the past two years largely driven by investments in artificial intelligence and building data center capacity. More broadly, the U.S. economy is showing signs of slowing, with questions about the strength of the consumer and the prospect of higher inflation tied to Trump’s plans to impose tariffs.

Performance Guidance

Still, the company's optimism about its much-anticipated Blackwell line of AI chips helped reassure investors. The company generated $11 billion in revenue from Blackwell in the fourth quarter, which Nvidia called the "fastest product growth" in its history. "Demand for Blackwell has been phenomenal," CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

The outlook comes at a volatile time for the artificial intelligence industry. Nvidia’s shares have fallen this year on concerns that data center operators will slow spending. Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has also raised concerns about high costs of computing power, which could reduce demand for Nvidia’s powerful AI chips.

Against that backdrop, Nvidia said growth remains strong — even if it’s not delivering the blowout growth that has become its hallmark. Nvidia said in a statement that it expects first-quarter sales to be around $43 billion; analysts’ average estimate was $42.3 billion, with some as high as $48 billion.

Gross margin guidance was slightly below expectations as the growth of the company's Blackwell chips weighed on Nvidia's profits. Nvidia expects gross margin to fall to 71% in the first quarter, below Wall Street's forecast of 72.2%, according to data compiled by LSEG. Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said that as Nvidia increases production of Blackwell chips, the company will reduce costs and improve margins, and said it will return to the mid-70% level later in the fiscal year.

Nvidia's stock price is down 2.2% this year, after a stunning run-up in 2023 and 2024 that would have made it the world's most valuable chipmaker.

Nvidia has been the biggest beneficiary of a huge surge in spending on artificial intelligence, with revenue doubling in the past two years. Many large technology companies are investing tens of billions of dollars in data center hardware, and Nvidia is the leading seller of processors for creating and running AI software.

Along the way, Nvidia and its CEO have become synonymous with the AI ​​revolution and the biggest bellwether for its progress. Huang has spent much of the past two years traveling around the world as an evangelist for AI technology, which he believes is still in the early stages of spreading throughout the economy.

Nvidia is best known for selling graphics processors, but has found that the technology can also be applied to artificial intelligence. Its chips help software models learn to recognize and respond to real-world inputs during the training process. Nvidia components are also used in systems that then run software, a stage known as inference, and power services such as ChatGPT.

Before the earnings report, analysts had expressed concerns about the near-term growth of Nvidia's largest business, serving customers in data centers. The big question is whether supply constraints and the shift to Blackwell will slow growth. New technologies are more complex, creating manufacturing challenges.

Meanwhile, DeepSeek recently released a powerful AI model that the company said required much less input to create, adding to concerns. The news led to a broad sell-off in AI-related stocks. Nvidia lost $589 billion in market value in a single day, a market record.

But major Nvidia customers such as Microsoft (MSFT.US) maintained their capital spending plans, suggesting that AI spending will remain strong. Meanwhile, reports on Monday said Chinese companies are increasing orders for Nvidia's H20 AI chip due to surging demand for its DeepSeek low-cost AI model.

“Despite the DeepSeek breakthrough, Nvidia’s momentum in the hyperscaler space appears to be continuing,” said Third Bridge analyst Lucas Keh, referring to large cloud computing companies.

"Despite market concerns about DeepSeek's efficient model and challenges with early Blackwell deployments, Nvidia's results reaffirm that it will continue to lead the AI ​​space," said eMarketer analyst Jacob Bourne. "Competitors are making progress, but leading-edge models require the advanced computing resources that Nvidia provides."