Nvidia alerts robust AI chip demand regardless of DeepSeek menace

Nvidia has signalled no drop in demand for its flagship chips amongst large synthetic intelligence (AI) spenders regardless of the low-cost problem posed by Chinese language rival DeepSeek.

The main AI chipmaker mentioned it anticipated Blackwell gross sales to proceed to develop after its newest earnings beat market expectations.

Nvidia forecast income of round $43bn (£34bn) for its first quarter after attaining a determine of $39.3bn (£31bn) over its final three months – up 12% from the earlier quarter and 78% from one 12 months in the past.

Only a month in the past, its shares took a hammering when it emerged DeepSeek‘s main chatbot, which makes use of lower-cost chips, had turn out to be the preferred free software on Apple’s App Retailer throughout the US.

It additionally prompted traders to query whether or not the AI-led inventory market rally of latest years was overblown.

There was nervousness forward of Nvidia’s earnings report although shares solely fell fractionally in after-hours dealing.

Market analysts steered demand from Microsoft, Amazon and different heavyweight tech firms racing to construct
AI infrastructure remained strong, given Nvidia’s income steerage despite the fact that the majority of it’s accounted for via knowledge centres.

Learn extra: What’s DeepSeek?

Nvidia founder Jensen Huang mentioned Nvidia has ramped up the massive-scale manufacturing of Blackwell and achieved “billions of {dollars} in gross sales in its first quarter”.

“Demand for Blackwell is wonderful as reasoning AI provides one other scaling regulation – growing compute for coaching makes fashions smarter and growing compute for lengthy considering makes the reply smarter.

“AI is advancing at mild pace as agentic AI and bodily AI set the stage for the subsequent wave of AI to revolutionise the biggest industries,” he mentioned.

Derren Nathan, head of fairness analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown, mentioned of the report: “The longer-term funding case for the motive force of the AI prepare is wanting troublesome to select holes in, with Meta’s $200bn simply one of many newest mega investments in knowledge centres to be unveiled lately.

“By advantage of scale, development could also be slowing a bit of however upgrades to analysts full-year numbers could be anticipated off the again of at present’s outcomes. At a round 30x ahead earnings, the valuation nonetheless would not look overcooked.”