NVIDIA's Quarterly Growth Approaches 70% Riding AI Boom Despite Tariff Shock

[Financial News] Despite the Trump administration's export restrictions to China, NVIDIA's sales for this quarter from February to April marked an increase of 69%, approaching 70%.
The explosive demand for artificial intelligence (AI) chips used in data centers, automobiles, and robotics easily filled the gap in exports to China and achieved steep growth.
According to NVIDIA and the Financial Times on the 29th, NVIDIA recorded sales of 44.06 billion dollars (60.6 trillion won) and earnings per share of 0.96 dollars (1320 won) this quarter.
Both sales and earnings per share exceeded market research expectations. Sales increased by 69% compared to the same period last year, and net profit also increased by 26% from a year ago to 14.9 billion dollars.



Sales in the data center sector, which has high demand for AI chips and related components, increased by 73% to 39.1 billion dollars, leading the growth. This sector accounted for 88% of total sales. Large cloud providers like Microsoft (MS) accounted for half of this sector's sales.
Networking product sales also recorded 5 billion dollars. It was used to connect numerous NVIDIA chips for AI research. The gaming sector saw a 42% increase to 3.8 billion dollars, and the automotive and robotics sector recorded sales of 567 million dollars, a 72% increase.
AP News commented, "NVIDIA achieved another strong quarterly growth amid the demand for high-performance chips, overcoming the tariff shock."



NVIDIA projected sales of 45 billion dollars for the next quarter (May to July). This is a conservative estimate compared to LSEG's sales forecast of 45.9 billion dollars.
Jensen Huang, CEO of NVIDIA, expressed confidence in future growth, stating, "The demand for NVIDIA AI infrastructure is very strong globally." 
Colette Kress, CFO, also projected, "MS has equipped tens of thousands of Blackwell chips, and OpenAI, a partner of MS, will expand the GB200 product (equipped with Blackwell) to hundreds of thousands." She also optimistically stated, "There are projects that will require NVIDIA AI infrastructure amounting to tens of gigawatts in the future." On the 13th, NVIDIA signed a contract to supply more than 18,000 of the latest AI chips to the Saudi company 'Humain' and also decided to participate in building the world's largest data center in the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Amidst this, CEO Jensen Huang emphasized that trade with China is essential for the US to become a global leader in the AI field. He argued that if the US falls behind in the Chinese market, it will suffer a significant blow to its global competitiveness in the long term.




In an interview with CNBC, Jensen Huang stated, "There are many developers in China, and we want developers worldwide to prefer the US technology stack," saying, "This is the most important strategic reason we need to enter China."
He revealed that historically successful platforms are those with the most developers, and 50% of AI developers worldwide are in China. Jensen Huang criticized US export restrictions, stating that "the 50 billion dollar (about 69 trillion won) Chinese market is virtually closed to the US industry" due to chip export restrictions.
Currently, due to Trump administration regulations, NVIDIA sells the L20 processor, which has lower specifications than the H20, to Chinese customers. This chip lacks high-bandwidth memory (HBM) and has reduced computational performance. The H20 is a low-spec product redesigned to meet US Biden administration's regulations on China. 


june@fnnews.com Lee Seok-woo Reporter