Nvidia Flexes Bold Guidance but Can the Chipmaker Deliver on It?

Chief Jensen Huang showed hubris on the earnings call right after Nvidia NVDA reported another blockbuster quarter with record sales and soaring profits. He said that demand for the new Blackwell chip is “amazing.”

“Well, I'm more enthusiastic today than I was at CES [..] We have some 350 plants manufacturing the 1.5 million components that go into each one of the Blackwell racks, Grace Blackwell racks. Yes, it's extremely complicated,” Huang said. “Nothing is easy about what we’re doing, but we’re doing great.”

Everyone and their dog was glued to the screen after-hours Wednesday, waiting to hear what the most important person for the stock market was going to say. And many were hoping it’ll be good and Nvidia will save us from the recent selloff that spilled from tech stocks to all stocks.

And indeed, it was another stellar performance by Nvidia. For the fourth quarter ended January 26, the chipmaking giant pulled in record revenue of $39.3 billion, up 80% from a year ago, topping analyst estimates for $38 billion. Earnings per share reached $0.89 against Wall Street guidance for $0.84 a pop. Net income landed at $22.1 billion, up 80% from a year earlier.

Without a doubt, Nvidia continued its string of record-shattering results. And, what’s more, that’s also what Nvidia thinks will happen with the current quarter. The company projected revenue of $43 billion for the first three months of 2025, up 65% from the year-ago quarter when sales hit $26 billion.

To get to that figure, and keep the growth going, Nvidia will need to retain all its deep-pocketed clients like Amazon AMZN, Meta META, Microsoft MSFT and Alphabet GOOGL. These four alone make up about half of Nvidia’s revenue. Other customers with buckets of cash include ChatGPT parent OpenAI and Elon Musk’s Tesla TSLA.

As to the share price, investors didn’t really cheer the upbeat guidance or the double beat on both earnings and revenue. The stock showed virtually no reaction in extended trading — could it be that markets expected an even bigger blowout performance?

Or maybe they don’t believe in Nvidia’s business model after DeepSeek achieved for mere millions what OpenAI achieved for hundreds of millions? Year to date, Nvidia, the second-largest company in the world, is down 5% to $3.2 trillion. It’s drifted about 10% away from the all-time high hit in early January.

And with this, make sure to closely watch the earnings calendar for other hot reports as AI history is being made before our eyes.

What’s your take on Nvidia’s future? Do you think its Big Tech clients will soon whip up their own AI chips? Or is Nvidia’s AI dominance set in stone? Share your thoughts in the comment section!