NVIDIA CORP: what changed in the 10-K
| Item | Unchanged | New | Removed | Reworded | Split / merged | Figures only |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Business | 47 | 17 | 40 | 40 | 2 | 1 |
| 1A Risk Factors | 154 | 20 | 14 | 43 | 10 | 1 |
| 1C Cybersecurity | 6 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 |
| 3 Legal Proceedings | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 7 Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations | 37 | 27 | 34 | 35 | 1 | 9 |
| 7A Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk | 5 | 4 | 1 | 2 | 0 | 2 |
Paragraphs are matched by content, not position, so reordering isn't a change. Tables are left out. Matching is heuristic: about 9 in 10 borderline rewordings are paired correctly (see the project README). Generated by 10k-diff from SEC EDGAR filings.
Item 1. Business
Introduced with the Blackwell architecture, our data-center-scale offerings feature extreme co-design where the infrastructure’s chips, networking, systems, software, and algorithms are holistically architected and optimized to maximize performance and scale. Hundreds of thousands of GPUs can be interconnected to function as a single giant computer. This type of data center architecture and scale is needed for the development and deployment of modern AI and accelerated computing applications.
For physical AI, we provide an end-to-end platform spanning data center infrastructure, open models, systems, embedded compute modules, and software stacks to train, simulate, and deploy advanced automation and robotics solutions.
Many leading 3D design and content creation applications developed by our ecosystem partners support RTX, allowing professionals to accelerate and transform their workflows with NVIDIA RTX PRO GPUs and software. As these applications increasingly integrate AI, these GPUs are used and leverage the same Tensor Core technology found in our Data Center solutions.
In April 2025, the USG informed us that it requires a license for export to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and D:5 countries, or to companies headquartered or with an ultimate parent therein, of our H20 integrated circuits and any other circuits achieving the H20’s memory bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth, or combination thereof. As a result of these requirements, we incurred a $4.5 billion charge in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 associated with H20 for excess inventory and purchase obligations, as the demand for H20 products diminished.
In August 2025, the USG granted licenses that would allow us to ship certain H20 products to certain China-based customers. We generated approximately $60 million in H20 revenue under those licenses. USG officials expressed an expectation that the USG will receive 15% or more of the revenue generated from licensed sales of our products, but the USG did not publish a regulation codifying such requirement.
In February 2026, the USG granted a license that would allow us to ship small amounts of H200 products to specific China-based customers. To date, we have not generated any revenue under the H200 licensing program, and do not yet know whether any imports will be allowed into China. The license requires that the H200s go through an inspection process in the United States prior to any shipment to the customer. As a result, any H200 shipped under the new licensing program will be subject to a 25% tariff upon importation into the United States.
In the event that we are able to sell licensed products into the China market, we may not be able to pass along all or any of the tariff to our customers, and may be subject to litigation, increased costs, and a harmed competitive position.
The export controls applicable to China are complex and address a variety of parameters, including the total processing performance of a chip, the “performance density” of a chip, the interconnect bandwidth of a chip, and the memory bandwidth of a chip. Under the current rules and geopolitical landscape, we are unable to create and deliver a competitive product for China’s data center market that receives approval from both the USG and the Chinese government. As of the end of fiscal year 2026, we were effectively foreclosed from competing in China's data center computing/compute market, and our effective foreclosure from the China market helped our competitors build larger developer and customer ecosystems to challenge us worldwide. Unless we are able to return with a product that meets the approval of both the USG and the Chinese government, our lost opportunity and the benefit to our competitors will have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In addition to controls targeting D:1, D:4 and D:5 countries, the USG has also imposed worldwide export controls impacting our products, and may impose additional controls in the future.
In January 2025, the USG published the AI Diffusion IFR in the Federal Register. The IFR would have imposed a worldwide licensing requirement on our data center products, such as our H200, GB200 and GB300. The AI Diffusion IFR would have divided the world into three tiers, relegating most countries to “Tier 2” status, and would have created a complex and burdensome scheme for licensing approvals.
In May 2025, the USG announced that it would rescind the AI Diffusion IFR and implement a replacement rule. The scope, timing, and requirements of the forthcoming rule remain uncertain. The replacement rule may impose new restrictions on our products or operations and/or add license requirements that could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. For example, in October 2025, the Senate passed the “GAIN AI Act” in the NDAA. The GAIN AI Act would restrict the Trump Administration’s ability to adapt the Biden Administration’s export control rules, and could also allow private U.S. persons to review and overturn licensing and foreign policy decisions made by the Trump Administration.
Our competitive position has been harmed by export controls, and our competitive position and future results will be further harmed, over the long term, if the restrictions remain in place or are expanded in geographic, customer, or product scope, if customers purchase product from competitors, if customers develop their own internal solution, if we are unable to provide contractual warranty or other extended service obligations, if the USG does not grant licenses in a timely manner or denies licenses to significant customers or if we incur significant transition costs.
The licensing process may not be resolved before significant business opportunities evaporate. Even if the USG grants any requested licenses, the licenses have already and may in the future be temporary, impose burdensome conditions regarding the installation, maintenance, and use of such products, or include financial or economic requirements that we or our customers or end users cannot or choose not to fulfill. The licensing requirements have already and may in the future benefit certain of our competitors, as the licensing process will make our pre-sale and post-sale technical support efforts more cumbersome and less certain and encourage customers in China, the Middle East, and other regions to pursue alternatives to our products, including semiconductor suppliers based in China, Europe, and Israel.
Additionally, restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on the duration of gaming activities and access to games may adversely affect our Gaming revenue, and even if we are able to participate in the China data center compute market, increased oversight of digital platform companies may adversely affect our Data Center revenue. The Chinese government has encouraged customers to purchase from our China-based competitors and discouraged customers from purchasing, importing, or using our data center products, including any China-specific product designed to comply with U.S. export controls.
Within our workforce, more than 80 percent have technical roles and more than half of the workforce hold an advanced degree. Our employees also help to surface top talent, with over 40 percent of our new hires in fiscal year 2026 coming from employee referrals. In fiscal year 2026, our turnover rate was 3.7 percent.
We invest in employee development through on-the-job trainings and tuition reimbursement programs.
Our compensation and benefits are designed to reward performance and align employee interests with those of our shareholders through equity participation and comprehensive health and financial wellness programs. We also utilize employee listening systems to gather feedback and maintain an inclusive culture where hiring and promotions are based on merit.
Our data-center-scale offerings are comprised of compute and networking solutions that can scale to tens of thousands of GPU-accelerated servers interconnected to function as a single giant computer; this type of data center architecture and scale is needed for the development and deployment of modern AI applications.
The NVIDIA RTX platform makes it possible to render film-quality, photorealistic objects and environments with physically accurate shadows, reflections and refractions using ray tracing in real-time. Many leading 3D design and content creation applications developed by our ecosystem partners now support RTX, allowing professionals to accelerate and transform their workflows with NVIDIA RTX GPUs and software.
We offer NVIDIA Omniverse as a development platform and operating system for building and running virtual world simulation applications, available as a software subscription for enterprise use and free for individual use. Industrial enterprises are adopting Omniverse’s 3D and simulation technologies to digitalize their complex physical assets, processes, and environments – building digital twins of factories, real time 3D product configurators, testing and validating autonomous robots and vehicles, powered by NVIDIA accelerated computing infrastructure on-premises and in the cloud.
We are working with several hundred partners in the automotive ecosystem including automakers, truck makers, tier-one suppliers, sensor manufacturers, automotive research institutions, HD mapping companies, and startups to develop and deploy AI systems for self-driving vehicles. Our unified AI computing architecture starts with training deep neural networks using our Data Center computing solutions, and then running a full perception, fusion, planning, and control stack within the vehicle on the NVIDIA DRIVE Hyperion platform. DRIVE Hyperion consists of the high-performance, energy efficient DRIVE AGX computing hardware running an in-vehicle operating system (DRIVE OS), a reference sensor set that supports full self-driving capability as well as an open, modular DRIVE software platform for autonomous driving, mapping, and parking services, and intelligent in-vehicle experiences.
In addition, we offer a scalable data center-based simulation solution based on NVIDIA Omniverse software to develop synthetic data for AI model training, as well as for testing and validating a self-driving platform. Our unique end-to-end, software-defined approach is designed for continuous innovation and continuous development, enabling cars to receive over-the-air updates to add new features and capabilities throughout the life of a vehicle.
On January 15, 2025, the USG published the “AI Diffusion” IFR in the Federal Register. After a 120-day delayed compliance period, the IFR will, unless modified, impose a worldwide licensing requirement on all products classified under Export Control Classification Numbers, or ECCNs, 3A090.a, 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, including all related software and technology. Any system that incorporates one or more of the covered integrated circuits, or ICs, (including but not limited to NVIDIA DGX, HGX, and MGX systems) will be covered by the new licensing requirement. The licensing requirement will include future NVIDIA ICs, boards, or systems classified with ECCN 3A090.a or 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, achieving certain total processing performance and/or performance density.
Unless a license exception is available, the worldwide licensing requirements will apply to the following NVIDIA products, and any others we develop that meet the characteristics of 3A090.a or 4A090.a, including but not limited to: A100, A800, H100, H200, H800, B100, B200, GB200, L4, L40S, and RTX 6000 Ada.
Our competitive position has been harmed by the existing export controls, and our competitive position and future results may be further harmed, over the long term, if there are further changes in the USG’s export controls. Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results. In the event of such change, we may be unable to sell our inventory of such products and may be unable to develop replacement products not subject to the licensing requirements, effectively excluding us from all or part of the China market, as well as other impacted markets, including the Middle East and countries designated “Tier 2” by the AI Diffusion IFR. In addition to export controls, the USG may impose restrictions on the import and sale of products that incorporate technologies developed or manufactured in whole or in part in China. For example, the USG is considering restrictions on the import and sale of certain automotive products in the United States, which if adopted and interpreted broadly, could impact our ability to develop and supply solutions for our automotive customers.
Sustainability and Governance
NVIDIA invents computing technologies that improve lives and address global challenges. Our goal is to integrate sound environmental, social, and corporate governance principles and practices into every aspect of the Company. The Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee of our Board of Directors is responsible for reviewing and discussing with management our practices related to sustainability and corporate governance. We assess our programs annually in consideration of stakeholder expectations, market trends, and business risks and opportunities. These issues are important for our continued business success and reflect the topics of highest concern to NVIDIA and our stakeholders.
The following section and the Human Capital Management Section below provide an overview of our principles and practices. More information can be found on our website and in our annual Sustainability Report. Information contained on our website or in our annual Sustainability Report is not incorporated by reference into this or any other report we file with the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the SEC. Refer to “Item 1A. Risk Factors” for a discussion of risks and uncertainties we face related to sustainability.
Climate Change
In the area of environmental sustainability, we work to address our climate impacts across our product lifecycle and assess related risks, including current and emerging regulations and market impacts.
In May 2024, we published metrics related to our environmental impact for fiscal year 2024. Fiscal year 2025 metrics are expected to be published in the first half of fiscal year 2026. There has been no material impact to our capital expenditures, results of operations or competitive position associated with global environmental sustainability regulations, compliance, or costs from sourcing renewable energy. We committed to purchase or generate enough renewable energy to match 100% of our global electricity usage for offices and data centers under our operational control starting with our fiscal year 2025. In fiscal year 2024, we made progress towards this goal and increased the percentage of our electricity use matched by renewable energy to 76%. By the end of fiscal year 2026, we also aim to engage manufacturing suppliers comprising at least 67% of NVIDIA’s scope 3 category 1 GHG emissions with the goal of effecting supplier adoption of science-based targets.
Whether it is creation of technology to power next-generation laptops or designs to support high-performance supercomputers, improving energy efficiency is important in our research, development, and design processes. GPU-accelerated computing is inherently more energy efficient than traditional computing for many workloads because it is optimized for throughput, performance per watt, and certain AI workloads. We continue to have a strong presence on the Green500 list of the most energy-efficient systems—we powered 8 of the top 10 most energy efficient systems, including the top supercomputer, on the November 2024 Green500 list.
We launched our Earth-2 initiative to create a digital twin of the Earth on NVIDIA AI and NVIDIA Omniverse platforms. Earth-2 will enable scientists, companies, and policy makers to do ultra-high-resolution predictions of the impact of climate change and explore mitigation and adaptation strategies.
We believe that our employees are our greatest assets, and they play a key role in creating long-term value for our stakeholders. As of the end of fiscal year 2025, we had approximately 36,000 employees in 38 countries; 27,100 were engaged in research and development and 8,900 were engaged in sales, marketing, operations, and administrative positions. The Compensation Committee of our Board of Directors assists in the oversight of policies and strategies relating to human capital management.
Recruitment
As the demand for global technical talent continues to be high, we have grown our technical workforce and have been successful in attracting top talent to NVIDIA. We have attracted talent worldwide through our strong employer brand and differentiated hiring strategies for college, professional, and leadership talent. Our workforce is 82% technical and 51% hold advanced degrees. Additionally, we have increased our focus on diversity recruiting and we welcome employees of all backgrounds. Our own employees also help to surface top talent, with over 41% of our new hires in fiscal year 2025 coming from employee referrals.
Development and Retention
To support employee development, we provide opportunities to learn on-the-job through training courses, targeted development programs, mentoring and peer coaching and ongoing feedback. We constantly upgrade our learning offerings to ensure that our employees are exposed to the most current content and technologies available. We offer tuition reimbursement programs to subsidize educational programs and advanced certifications and encourage internal job mobility. We have also implemented specifically designed mentoring and development programs for women and employees from traditionally underrepresented groups to ensure widespread readiness for future advancement.
To evaluate employee sentiment and engagement, we use pulse surveys, a suggestion box, and an anonymous third-party platform. We want NVIDIA to be a place where people can grow their careers over their lifetime and our employees tend to come and stay. In fiscal year 2025, our overall turnover rate was 2.5%.
Compensation, Benefits, and Well-Being
Our compensation program rewards performance and is structured to encourage employees to invest in the Company’s future. Employees receive equity, except where unavailable due to local regulations, that is tied to the value of our stock price and vests over time to retain employees while simultaneously aligning their interests with those of our shareholders.
We offer comprehensive benefits to support our employees’ and their families’ physical health, well-being, and financial health. Programs include 401(k) programs in the U.S., statutory and supplemental pension programs outside the U.S., our employee stock purchase program, flexible work hours, and time off policies. We evaluate our benefit offerings globally and aim to provide comparable support across the regions where we operate. We offer tailored benefits based on the needs of our employees including continuing support for parents; both new birth parents and those who wish to become parents. Our support is enhanced during times of crisis, such as war or economic volatility, to take care of our existing team of world-class talent and their families.
Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at NVIDIA
We believe that diverse teams fuel innovation, and we are committed to creating an inclusive culture that supports all our employees.
When recruiting new talent or developing our current employees, we strive to build a diverse talent pipeline that includes those underrepresented in the technology field, including women, Black/African American, and Hispanic/Latino candidates.
To this end, we:
•Hire, promote and compensate our employees based on merit;
•Partner with institutions and professional organizations serving historically underrepresented communities;
•Enlist dedicated recruiting teams to shepherd underrepresented candidates through the interview process and identify internal opportunities;
•Support the development and growth of women employees through programs aimed at building a pipeline of future leaders;
•Provide peer support and executive sponsors for our internal community resource groups;
•Provide training and education to managers and peers on fostering supportive environments that allow all our employees to do their best work;
•Track equity and parity in retention, promotions, pay, and employee engagement scores; and
•Measure year over year progress and provide leadership visibility on talent and diversity efforts.
As of the end of fiscal year 2025, our global workforce was 78% male, 21% female, and 1% not declared, with 6% of our workforce in the United States composed of Black or African American and Hispanic or Latino employees.
Flexible Working Environment
We support a flexible work environment allowing us to recruit the very best employees, regardless of where they live. This flexibility supports diverse hiring, retention of talent, including working parents and other caregivers and employee engagement, which we believe makes NVIDIA a great place to work. We also provide company-wide 2-days off per quarter for employees to rest and recharge.
40 reworded paragraphs, most changed first.
The Graphics segment includes GeForce GPUs for gaming and PCs, the GeForce NOW game streaming service and related infrastructure, and solutions for gaming platforms; Quadro / NVIDIA RTX GPUs for enterprise workstation graphics ; virtual GPU, or vGPU, software for cloud-based visual and virtual computing; automotive platforms for infotainment systems; and Omniverse Enterprise software for building and operating industrial AI and digital twin applications .
To execute our business strategy successfully, we must recruit focus on recruiting , develop developing , and retain the very best retaining top global talent globally, including exceptional executives, scientists, engineers, and technical and non-technical staff .
Automotive is comprised of platform solutions for automated driving from the cloud to the car. Leveraging our technology leadership in AI and building on our long-standing relationships across several hundred automotive relationships ecosystem partners , we are delivering a complete full stack end-to-end solution for the AV market under the DRIVE Hyperion brand platform . We have demonstrated multiple applications This platform consists of AI within the car: AI can drive the car itself development infrastructure, high-performance, energy efficient DRIVE AGX computing hardware running an in-vehicle operating system (DRIVE OS), a reference sensor set that supports full self-driving capability as a pilot in fully well as an open, modular DRIVE software platform for autonomous mode or it can also be a co-pilot driving , assisting the human driver while creating a safer driving experience mapping, and parking services, and intelligent in-vehicle experiences .
At the foundation of the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform are our GPUs, which excel at parallel workloads such as the training and inferencing of neural networks. They These Data Center systems are available in extreme co-designed with the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform GPU, CPU, NVLink switch, DPU, NIC, and in industry standard servers from every major cloud provider scale-out networking along with software stacks and server maker. Beyond GPUs, our data center platform expanded to include DPUs in fiscal year 2022 and CPUs in fiscal year 2024. We can optimize across the entire computing, networking and storage stack algorithms to deliver data center-scale computing solutions.
In August 2022, the U.S. government, or the USG, announced export restrictions and export licensing requirements that targeting China's semiconductor and supercomputing industries. These restrictions impacted exports of certain chips , with as well as software, hardware, equipment and technology used to develop, produce and manufacture certain exceptions, impact exports chips to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia of , and specifically impact our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits. In July 2023, the USG also informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East.
Our gaming platforms leverage our GPUs and sophisticated software to enhance the gaming experience with smoother, higher quality graphics. We developed NVIDIA RTX to bring next generation graphics and AI to games. NVIDIA RTX features ray tracing technology for real-time, cinematic-quality rendering . Ray tracing , which has long been used for special effects in the movie industry, is a computationally intensive technique that simulates the physical behavior of light to achieve greater realism in computer-generated scenes. NVIDIA RTX also features and deep learning super sampling, or NVIDIA DLSS, our AI technology that boosts frame rates while generating beautiful, sharp high-quality images for games. RTX GPUs will also feature NVIDIA tensor core technology making them well suited to accelerate a new generation of on-device AI applications. With an installed base of over 100 million AI capable PCs, more than 700 RTX AI-enabled applications and games, and a robust suite of development tools, RTX is already the AI PC leader.
In October 2023, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements that became effective in our fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 for exports to China and Country Groups D1 D: 1 , D4 D: 4 , and D5 D: 5 (including but not limited to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S and RTX 4090 , GB200 NVL72, and B200 . The licensing requirements also apply to the export of products exceeding certain performance thresholds to a party headquartered in, or with an ultimate parent headquartered in, Country Group D5, including China. On October 23, 2023, the USG informed us that the licensing requirements were effective immediately for shipments of our A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S products (removing the grace period granted by the official rule). Blackwell systems, such as GB200 NVL 72 and NVL 36 as well as B200 are also subject to these requirements and therefore require a license for any shipment to certain entities and to China and Country Groups D1, D4 and D5, excluding Israel. To date, we have not received licenses to ship these restricted products to China. Additionally, we understand that partners and customers have also not received a license to ship these restricted products.
In fiscal year 2025, we launched announced the NVIDIA Blackwell GeForce RTX 50 Series family of desktop and laptop GPUs. The Blackwell architecture introduced neural graphics which combines AI models with traditional rendering to unlock a new era of graphics innovation. The RTX 50 Series also features boost game performance, image quality, and interactivity, as well as the next generation of our DLSS technology powered for the first time by a new transformer model architecture. Together these technologies help deliver up to a 2x leap in performance In fiscal year 2026, we launched and stunning visual realism scaled Blackwell architecture for PC gamers, developers, gaming and creatives GeForce NOW .
The world's leading All major cloud service providers, or CSPs, AI model makers, and consumer internet companies enterprises use our data center-scale accelerated infrastructure and computing platforms to enable, accelerate , develop, or enrich the services and offerings they deliver to billions of end users and customers , including AI solutions and assistants, AI foundation models, advertising, search, recommendations recommendation systems , social networking , data processing , online shopping, live video, and translation. AI model makers use our infrastructure and software hosted at CSPs to develop, build and run AI models, product offerings, and services.
The Compute & Networking segment includes our Data Center accelerated computing and networking platforms and AI solutions and software ; networking; automotive , and Automotive platforms and autonomous and electric vehicle solutions ; Jetson for robotics and other embedded platforms; and DGX Cloud computing services including software .
Extending our technology and platform leadership in computer graphics. We believe that computer graphics infused with AI is fundamental to the continued expansion and evolution of computing. We apply our research and development resources to enhance the user experience for consumer entertainment and professional visualization applications and create new virtual world and simulation capabilities. Our technologies are instrumental in driving the gaming, design, and creative industries forward, as developers leverage our libraries and algorithms to deliver an optimized experience on our GeForce and NVIDIA RTX platforms. Our computer graphics platforms leverage AI end-to-end, from the developer tools and cloud services to the Tensor Cores included in all RTX-class GPUs. For example, NVIDIA Avatar Cloud Engine, or ACE, is a suite of technologies that help developers bring digital avatars to life Blackwell GPUs' advanced AI and neural rendering capabilities combined with generative NVIDIA's world-class AI , software stacks significantly accelerate AI workloads running in the cloud or locally on the PC. GeForce Experience enhances each gamer's experience by optimizing their PC's settings, as well as enabling the recording and sharing of gameplay. Our Studio drivers enhance and accelerate a number of popular creative applications PCs . Omniverse is real-time 3D design collaboration and virtual world simulation software that empowers artists, designers, and creators to connect and collaborate in leading design applications. We also enable interactive graphics applications - such as games, movie and photo editing and design software - to be accessed by almost any device, almost anywhere, through our cloud platforms such as vGPU for enterprise and GeForce NOW for gaming.
Our networking offerings include NVLink interconnects and switches, end-to-end platforms for InfiniBand and Ethernet, consisting of network adapters, cables, DPUs, switch chips and systems, as well as a full software stack . This has enabled us to architect data center-scale computing platforms that can interconnect up to hundreds of thousands of compute nodes with high-performance networking. While historically the server was the unit of computing, as Fueled by an expansion in AI and HPC workloads have become extremely large spanning thousands of compute nodes , the data center has become the new unit of computing, with networking as an integral part. In fiscal year 2026, we introduced NVIDIA NVLink Fusion to enable hyperscalers and custom ASIC designers to integrate custom CPUs and XPUs with our platform.
We serve the Professional Visualization market by working closely with independent software vendors, or ISVs, to optimize their offerings for NVIDIA GPUs. Our GPU computing platform enhances productivity and introduces new capabilities for critical workflows in many fields, such as design and manufacturing , engineering, and digital content creation . Design and manufacturing encompass computer-aided design, architectural design, consumer-products manufacturing, medical instrumentation, and aerospace. Digital content creation includes professional video editing and post-production, special effects for films, and broadcast-television graphics across a wide range of industry verticals . Additionally, the infusion of generative AI into an increasing number of generative and agentic AI applications is giving rise to the need for the enhanced AI and data processing capabilities of our RTX PRO GPUs.
In fiscal year 2025, we launched the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture, a full set of data center scale infrastructure that includes GPUs, CPUs, DPUs, interconnects, switch chips and systems, and networking adapters. Blackwell excels at processing cutting edge generative AI and accelerated computing workloads with market leading performance and efficiency. Offered in a number of configurations, it can address the needs of for customers across industries and a diverse set of AI and accelerated computing use cases. In fiscal year 2026, we unveiled the NVIDIA Rubin platform, which is expected to commence production shipments in the second half of fiscal year 2027. Built for agentic AI and reasoning, it excels at processing multi-step problem-solving and massive long-context workflows, delivering up to a 10x reduction in cost per token compared to Blackwell.
In addition to software delivered to customers as an integral part of our data center computing and networking platform, we offer paid licenses to NVIDIA AI Enterprise, a comprehensive suite of enterprise-grade AI software and NVIDIA vGPU software for graphics-rich virtual desktops and workstations. We also offer the NVIDIA DGX Cloud, a fully managed AI-training-as-a-service platform which includes cloud-based infrastructure and software for AI, customizable pretrained AI models, and access to NVIDIA experts.
NVIDIA pioneered accelerated computing to help solve the most challenging computational problems. NVIDIA is now a full-stack computing data center scale AI infrastructure company with data-center-scale offerings that are reshaping industry all industries .
Our compute offerings Data Center infrastructure systems include supercomputing platforms and servers, bringing together our higher performance, energy efficient GPUs, CPUs, interconnects, and fully optimized AI and HPC software stacks. In addition, they include NVIDIA AI Enterprise software; our DGX Cloud service; and a growing body of acceleration libraries , AI models and training data sets , APIs, SDKs, and domain-specific application frameworks.
Innovation is at our core. We have invested over $ 58.2 76.7 billion in research and development since our inception, yielding inventions that are essential to modern computing. Our invention of the GPU in 1999 sparked the growth of the PC gaming market and redefined computer graphics. With our introduction of the CUDA programming model in 2006, we opened the parallel processing capabilities of our GPU to a broad range of compute-intensive applications, paving the way for the emergence of modern AI. In 2012, the AlexNet neural network, trained on NVIDIA GPUs, won the ImageNet computer image recognition competition, marking the " Big Bang " moment of AI. We introduced our first Tensor Core GPU in 2017, built from the ground-up for the new era of AI, and our first autonomous driving system-on-chips, or SoC, in 2018. Our acquisition of Mellanox in 2020 expanded our innovation canvas offerings to include networking, enabled our platforms to be data center scale, and led to the introduction of a new processor class - the data processing unit, or DPU. Over the past 5 years, we have built full software stacks that run on top of our GPUs and CUDA to bring AI to the world's largest industries, including NVIDIA DRIVE stack for autonomous driving, Clara for healthcare, and Omniverse for industrial digitalization; physical AI applications, and introduced the NVIDIA AI Enterprise software - essentially an operating system for enterprise AI applications. In 2023, we introduced our first data center CPU, Grace, built for giant-scale AI and high performance high-performance computing, or HPC . In 2024, we launched the NVIDIA Blackwell architecture - connecting 36 Grace CPUs and 72 Blackwell GPUs in a data center scale, liquid-cooled design - for real-time trillion-parameter inference and training. In fiscal year 2026, we launched and scaled the NVIDIA Blackwell Ultra platform, optimized for agentic, reasoning, and physical AI. Building on the architectural breakthroughs of Blackwell and leveraging Dynamo inference software, it delivers a significant increase in token throughput and reduction in cost per token compared to the Hopper generation. More recently, in support of market development, we have accelerated the release cadence of our open AI model platforms including NVIDIA Nemotron for agentic AI and Cosmos for physical AI . With a strong engineering culture, we drive fast, yet harmonized, product and technology innovations in all dimensions of computing including silicon, systems, networking, software and algorithms. More than half of our engineers work on software.
The GPU was initially used to simulate human imagination, enabling the virtual worlds of video games and films. Today, it also simulates human intelligence, enabling a deeper understanding of language, science, and the physical world. Its parallel processing capabilities, supported by tens of thousands of computing cores, are essential for deep learning algorithms. This form of AI, in which software writes itself by learning from large amounts of data, can serve as the brain of computers, robots, and self-driving cars that can perceive , understand and understand reason about the world. GPU-powered AI solutions are being developed by thousands of enterprises to deliver services and products that would have been immensely difficult or even impossible with traditional coding. Examples include generative AI, which can create new content such as text, code, images, audio, video, molecule structures, and recommendation systems , which can recommend highly relevant content such as products, services, media, or ads using deep neural networks trained on vast datasets that capture the user's preferences ; and agentic AI where systems of AI models work in concert to automatically complete a task .
Our AI technology leadership is reinforced by our large and expanding ecosystem in a virtuous cycle . Our computing platforms are available from virtually every major server maker and CSP, as well as on our own AI supercomputers. There are over 5.9 7.5 million developers worldwide using CUDA and our other software tools to help deploy our technology in our target markets. We are the leader in accelerating and releasing open AI models which enterprises, sovereigns, and startups can leverage to develop and run applications on our platform. We evangelize AI through partnerships with hundreds of universities and tens of thousands of startups through our Inception program. Additionally, our Deep Learning Institute provides instruction on the latest techniques on how to design, train, and deploy neural networks in applications using our accelerated computing platform.
Our products for the gaming market include GeForce RTX and GeForce GTX GPUs for gaming desktop and laptop PCs, GeForce NOW cloud gaming for playing PC games on underpowered devices service , as well as SoCs and development services for game consoles.
The NVIDIA Data Center platform is focused on accelerating the most compute-intensive workloads, such as AI, data analytics processing , graphics , robotics , and scientific computing, delivering significantly better performance and power efficiency superior total cost of ownership relative to conventional CPU-only approaches. It is deployed in cloud, hyperscale, on-premises and edge data centers. The platform consists of data center compute and networking infrastructure offerings typically delivered to customers as rack-scale systems, subsystems, or modules, along with software and services.
While our approach starts with powerful chips, what makes it a full-stack computing platform is our large body of software, including the CUDA parallel programming model development platform , the CUDA-X collection of acceleration libraries , AI models and training data sets , APIs, SDKs, and domain-specific application frameworks.
NVIDIA has a platform strategy, bringing together hardware, systems, software, algorithms, libraries , AI models and training data sets , and services to create unique value for the markets we serve. While the computing requirements of these end markets are diverse, we address them with a unified underlying programmable architecture leveraging our GPUs and networking and software stacks. The programmable nature of our architecture allows allowing us to support several multi-billion-dollar end markets with the same underlying technology by using a variety of software stacks developed either internally or by third-party developers and partners. The large and growing number of developers and installed base across our platforms strengthens our ecosystem and increases the value of our platform to for our customers.
Our full-stack technology stack includes the foundational NVIDIA CUDA programming model development platform that runs on all NVIDIA GPUs, as well as hundreds of domain-specific software libraries, frameworks, algorithms, software development kits, or SDKs, and Application Programming Interfaces application programming interfaces , or APIs. This deep and broad software stack accelerates the performance and eases facilitates the deployment of NVIDIA accelerated computing for computationally intensive workloads such as artificial intelligence, or AI, model training and inference, data analytics, scientific computing, robotics, and 3D graphics, with vertical-specific optimizations to address industries ranging from healthcare and telecom to automotive and manufacturing.
Our customers include the world's leading all major public and private cloud and consumer internet companies providers , thousands of AI model makers, enterprises and startups, and public sector entities. We work with industry leaders to help build or transform their applications and data center infrastructure. Our Some of our direct customers include original equipment manufacturers, or OEMs, original device manufacturers, or ODMs, system integrators and distributors which we partner with to help bring our products to market. We also have partnerships in automotive, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, retail, and technology among others, to accelerate the adoption of AI.
In addition, we offer DGX Cloud, a fully managed AI-training-as-a-service platform, along with NVIDIA AI Enterprise-a comprehensive software suite designed to simplify the development and deployment of production-grade, end-to-end generative AI applications. NVIDIA AI Enterprise includes: NVIDIA NIM, which delivers a 2.5x increase in increases token throughput using industry-leading open and proprietary models; NVIDIA NeMo, a complete solution for curating, fine-tuning , reinforcement learning , evaluating, and safeguarding domain-adapted models; and AI Blueprints, pre-built, runnable templates that help enterprises build, optimize, and deploy AI agents while preserving privacy. These tools enable organizations to securely develop and run AI applications on NVIDIA-accelerated infrastructure anywhere.
We have expanded our supplier relationships to build redundancy and resilience in our operations to provide long-term manufacturing capacity aligned with growing customer demand. Our While currently our supply chain is mainly concentrated in Asia, we are expanding into the Asia-Pacific region U.S. and Latin America . We utilize foundries, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited, or TSMC, and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., or Samsung, to produce our semiconductor wafers. We purchase memory from SK Hynix Inc., Micron Technology, Inc., and Samsung. We utilize CoWoS technology for semiconductor packaging. We engage with independent subcontractors and contract manufacturers such as Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., Wistron Corporation, and Fabrinet to perform assembly, testing and packaging of our final products.
Researchers and developers use our computing solutions to accelerate a wide range of important applications, from simulating molecular dynamics to climate forecasting. With support for more than 4,400 6,000 applications, NVIDIA computing enables some of the most promising areas of discovery, from climate prediction to materials science and from wind tunnel simulation to genomics. Including GPUs and networking, NVIDIA powers over 75 78 % of the supercomputers on the global TOP500 list, including 38 9 of the top 50 10 systems on the Green500 list.
Gaming is the largest entertainment industry, with PC gaming as the predominant platform. Many factors propel its growth, including new high production value games and franchises , the continued rise of competitive gaming, or eSports, social connectivity and the increasing popularity of game streamers, modders, or gamers who remaster games, and creators.
Gamers choose NVIDIA GPUs to enjoy immersive, increasingly cinematic virtual worlds. In addition to serving the growing number of gamers, the market for PC GPUs is expanding because of the burgeoning growing population of live streamers, broadcasters, artists, and creators. With the advent of generative and agentic AI, we expect a broader set of PC users to choose NVIDIA GPUs for running generative AI these applications locally on their PC, which is critical for privacy, latency, and cost-sensitive AI applications.
• suppliers of hardware and software for SoC products that are used in servers or embedded into automobiles, autonomous machines, and gaming devices, such as Ambarella, Inc., AMD, Broadcom, Inc., or Broadcom, Intel, Qualcomm Incorporated, Renesas Electronics Corporation, and Samsung, or companies with internal teams designing SoC products for their own products and services, such as Tesla, Inc.; and
Advancing the leading autonomous vehicle platform. We believe the advent of autonomous vehicles, or AV, and electric vehicles, or EV, is revolutionizing the transportation industry. The algorithms required for autonomous driving - such as reasoning, perception, localization, and planning - are too complex for legacy hand-coded approaches and will use multiple neural networks instead. Therefore, we provide an AI-based hardware and software solution, designed and implemented from the ground up based on automotive safety standards, for the AV and EV market under the DRIVE brand, which we are bringing to market through our partnerships across the transportation industry including with automotive OEMs , mobility service providers, robotaxis , tier-1 suppliers, and start-ups. Our AV solution also includes the GPU-based hardware required to train the neural networks before their in-vehicle deployment, as well as to re-simulate their operation prior to any over-the-air software updates. We believe our comprehensive, top-to-bottom and end-to-end approach will enable the transportation industry to solve the complex problems arising from the shift to autonomous driving.
Professional artists, architects and designers use NVIDIA partner products accelerated with our GPUs and software platform for a range of creative , engineering, and design use cases, such as creating visual effects in movies or designing buildings and products. In addition, generative and agentic AI is expanding the market for our workstation-class GPUs, as more enterprise customers develop and deploy AI applications with their data on-premises.
While we work to enhance the resiliency and redundancy of our supply chain, which is currently concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region Asia , new and existing export controls or changes to existing export controls could limit alternative manufacturing locations and negatively impact our business. Refer to " Item 1A. Risk Factors - Risks Related to Regulatory, Legal, Our Stock , and Other Matters " for a discussion of this potential impact.
We specialize in markets where our computing and AI infrastructure platforms can provide tremendous acceleration for applications. These platforms incorporate processors, interconnects, software, algorithms, systems, and services to deliver unique value. Our platforms address four large markets where our expertise is critical: Data Center, Gaming, Professional Visualization, and Automotive.
• networking products consisting of switches, network adapters (including DPUs), and cable solutions (including optical modules) include such as AMD, Arista Networks, Broadcom, Cisco Systems, Inc., Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, Huawei, Intel, Lumentum Holdings Inc., and Marvell Technology, Inc . , as well as internal teams of system vendors and large cloud services companies.
We rely primarily on a combination of patents, trademarks, trade secrets, employee and third-party nondisclosure agreements, and licensing arrangements to protect our IP in the United States and internationally. Our currently issued patents have expiration dates from February 2025 March 2026 to June 2045. We have numerous patents issued, allowed, and pending in the United States and in foreign jurisdictions. Our patents and pending patent applications primarily relate to our products and the technology used in connection with our products. We also rely on international treaties, organizations, and foreign laws to protect our IP. The laws of certain foreign countries in which our products are or may be manufactured or sold, including various countries in Asia, may not protect our products or IP rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. This decreased protection makes the possibility of piracy of our technology and products more likely. We continuously assess whether and where to seek formal protection for innovations and technologies based on such factors as:
Advancing the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform. Our accelerated computing platform can solve complex problems in significantly less time and with lower power consumption than alternative computational approaches. Indeed, it It can help solve problems that were previously deemed unsolvable. We work to deliver continued performance leaps that outpace Moore's Law by leveraging innovation across the architecture, chip design, system, interconnect, algorithm, and software layers. This full-stack innovation approach allows us to deliver order-of-magnitude performance advantages relative to legacy approaches in our target markets, which include Data Center, Gaming, Professional Visualization, and Automotive. While the computing requirements of these end markets are diverse, we address them with a unified underlying architecture leveraging our GPUs, CPUs, CUDA and networking technologies as the fundamental building blocks. The programmable nature of our architecture allows us to make leveraged investments in research and development: we can support several multi-billion-dollar end markets with shared underlying technology by using a variety of software stacks developed either internally or by third-party developers and partners. We utilize this platform approach in each of our target markets.
Members of our sales team have technical expertise and product and industry knowledge. We also employ a team of application engineers and solution architects to provide pre-sales assistance to our partner network in designing, testing, and qualifying system designs that incorporate our platforms. For example, our solution architects work with CSPs to provide pre-sales assistance to enable our customers to optimize their hardware and software infrastructure for generative and agentic AI and LLM training and deployment. They also work with foundation model and enterprise software developers to enable our customers to optimize the training and fine-tuning of their models and services, and with enterprise end-users, often in collaboration with their global system integrator of choice, to fine-tune models and build AI applications. We believe that the depth and quality of our design support are key to improving our partner network's time-to-market, maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction, and fostering relationships that encourage our customers and partner network to use the next generation of our products within each platform.
3 paragraphs split, merged or with only figures updated
As of the end of fiscal year 2026, we had approximately 42,000 employees in 38 countries; 31,000 were engaged in research and development and 11,000 were engaged in sales, marketing, operations, and administrative positions.
In August 2022, the U.S. government, or USG, announced export restrictions and export licensing requirements targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries. These restrictions impacted exports of certain chips, as well as software, hardware, equipment and technology used to develop, produce and manufacture certain chips to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia, and specifically impact our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits. In July 2023, the USG also informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East.
The following sets forth certain information regarding our executive officers, their ages, and positions as of February 21 20 , 2025 2026 :
Item 1A. Risk Factors
•Commercial arrangements expose us to counterparty risks, which may negatively impact our business, financial condition, or results of operations.
We have entered into an intellectual property license arrangement with Groq, Inc., or Groq, that required significant, nonrefundable payments. Successfully incorporating the licensed technology into our architectures and product roadmaps requires significant engineering effort and may not occur on expected timelines or at all. The licensed technology may not achieve the desired results as designed or achieve customer or ecosystem adoption. The economic outcomes of this arrangement depend on our ability to translate the licensed technology into commercially viable products and services over time, and we may be unable to recover the associated costs or realize an adequate return on this spend. If our efforts to use the licensed technology are delayed or unsuccessful, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be negatively impacted.
•our customers’ and partners’ ability to secure capital and energy and to build complex datacenter infrastructure timely; and
The availability of data centers, energy, and capital to support the buildout of NVIDIA AI infrastructure by our customers and partners is crucial, and any shortage of these and other necessary resources could impact our future revenue and financial performance. Expanding energy capacity to meet demand is a complex, multi-year process involving significant regulatory, technical, and construction challenges. In addition, access to capital can be particularly constrained for less-capitalized companies, which may face difficulties securing financing for large-scale infrastructure projects. These limitations could delay customer and partner deployments or reduce the scale of accelerated computing and AI adoption.
We are increasing our U.S.-based manufacturing and investing in specialized equipment and processes to support domestic production. We may experience delays or difficulties in scaling production as planned. Our ability to increase manufacturing capabilities will depend on the domestic manufacturing ecosystem's capacity to ramp production supply to the required volume timely. Delays or shortfalls could impact our ability to meet demand.
Our investments in companies could create volatility and fluctuations in our results. These investments may generate realized and unrealized gains or losses and we could realize losses up to the value of the investments. We have invested and may continue to invest in our ecosystem. Many of these companies may not achieve profitability in the near term, or at all, and there is no guarantee that we will realize a return on our investment. We may continue to invest in companies to further our strategic objectives and to support certain key business initiatives, which could be subject to delays and challenges in obtaining regulatory approvals. Our investments in private companies include early-stage companies still defining their strategic direction. Many of the securities in which we invest are non-marketable and illiquid at the time of our initial investment. To the extent any of the companies in which we invest are not successful, we could recognize an impairment and/or lose all or part of our investment.
We are finalizing an investment and partnership agreement with OpenAI. There is no assurance that we will enter into an investment and partnership agreement with OpenAI or that a transaction will be completed.
Commercial arrangements expose us to counterparty risks.
We have entered and may in the future enter into commercial arrangements, including long-term capacity purchase obligations and financial guarantees, and have been asked to offer financing arrangements to support our customers’ and partners’ buildout of datacenter infrastructure. We have not entered into any financing arrangements. Commercial arrangements expose us to counterparty risk, including customers' or partners' inability to fulfill their financial commitments and secure necessary financing or infrastructure, the occurrence of significant project delays, and counterparty financial distress or insolvency, all of which may negatively impact our business, financial condition, or results of operations. Financing arrangements, if undertaken, may in some circumstances result in lower upfront cash flows associated with extended payment terms or payment terms made over a multi-year term and may increase credit risk.
In April 2025, the USG informed us that it requires a license for export to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and D:5 countries, or to companies headquartered or with an ultimate parent therein, of our H20 integrated circuits and any other circuits achieving the H20’s memory bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth, or combination thereof. As a result of these requirements, we incurred a $4.5 billion charge in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 associated with H20 for excess inventory and purchase obligations, as the demand for H20 products diminished.
In August 2025, the USG granted licenses that would allow us to ship certain H20 products to certain China-based customers. We generated approximately $60 million in H20 revenue under those licenses. USG officials expressed an expectation that the USG will receive 15% or more of the revenue generated from licensed sales of our products, but the USG did not publish a regulation codifying such requirement.
In February 2026, the USG granted a license that would allow us to ship small amounts of H200 products to specific China-based customers. To date, we have not generated any revenue under the H200 licensing program, and do not yet know whether any imports will be allowed into China. The license requires that the H200s go through an inspection process in the United States prior to any shipment to the customer. As a result, any H200 shipped under the new licensing program will be subject to a 25% tariff upon importation into the United States.
In the event that we are able to sell licensed products into the China market, we may not be able to pass along all or any of the tariff to our customers, and may be subject to litigation, increased costs, and a harmed competitive position.
The export controls applicable to China are complex and address a variety of parameters, including the total processing performance of a chip, the “performance density” of a chip, the interconnect bandwidth of a chip, and the memory bandwidth of a chip. Under the current rules and geopolitical landscape, we are unable to create and deliver a competitive product for China’s data center market that receives approval from both the USG and the Chinese government. As of the end of fiscal year 2026, we were effectively foreclosed from competing in China's data center computing/compute market, and our effective foreclosure from the China market helped our competitors build larger developer and customer ecosystems to challenge us worldwide. Unless we are able to return with a product that meets the approval of both the USG and the Chinese government, our lost opportunity and the benefit to our competitors will have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
In addition to controls targeting D:1, D:4 and D:5 countries, the USG has also imposed worldwide export controls impacting our products, and may impose additional controls in the future.
In January 2025, the USG published the AI Diffusion IFR in the Federal Register. The IFR would have imposed a worldwide licensing requirement on our data center products, such as our H200, GB200 and GB300. The AI Diffusion IFR would have divided the world into three tiers, relegating most countries to “Tier 2” status, and would have created a complex and burdensome scheme for licensing approvals.
In May 2025, the USG announced that it would rescind the AI Diffusion IFR and implement a replacement rule. The scope, timing, and requirements of the forthcoming rule remain uncertain. The replacement rule may impose new restrictions on our products or operations and/or add license requirements that could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. For example, in October 2025, the Senate passed the “GAIN AI Act” in the NDAA. The GAIN AI Act would restrict the Trump Administration’s ability to adapt the Biden Administration’s export control rules, and could also allow private U.S. persons to review and overturn licensing and foreign policy decisions made by the Trump Administration.
For example, the USG already imposed license conditions that limit the ability of foreign firms to create and offer as a service large-scale GPU clusters, such as imposing license conditions on the use of products to be exported to certain countries, and may impose additional conditions such as requiring chip tracking and throttling mechanisms that could disable or impair GPUs if certain events, including unauthorized system configuration, use, or location, are detected. Such government mandates in chip designs could introduce system vulnerabilities and expose us to significant risk and potential liability, negatively impact demand for our products, and could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Even if not enacted into binding legislation, draft bills have impacted and may in the future negatively impact our business. For example, following U.S. legislative proposals calling for mandatory features in our chips, China’s government publicly questioned whether our H20 products have built-in vulnerabilities, discouraging customers from purchasing our products. We provided a public response explaining that our GPUs, including H20, do not include such built-in vulnerabilities, and will respond to any follow-up questions we receive.
Open-source foundation models are rapidly growing in popularity with developers worldwide. Any regulatory control or other restriction that limits our ability to provide products and services that support third-party applications and models, including applications built on foundation models originating in China such as DeepSeek, Qwen, or KIMMI, could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition.
The increasingly complex export controls impose complex and burdensome compliance obligations on our partners, suppliers, and customers. While we seek to strictly comply with all applicable export control regulators, reports of diversion of controlled products, even when unsubstantiated and untrue, may negatively impact our business, relationships with partners and customers, and our reputation. Incorrect allegations that our compliance efforts satisfy the letter but not the “spirit” of the applicable regulations, as well as incorrect allegations that legitimate and appropriate business is using supposed “loopholes” in the export controls may negatively impact our business, relationships with partners and customers, and our reputation.
•our customers' ability to invest in AI infrastructure.
During the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, the USG announced export restrictions and export licensing requirements targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries. These restrictions impact exports of certain chips, as well as software, hardware, equipment and technology used to develop, produce and manufacture certain chips to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia, and specifically impact our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits. The licensing requirements also apply to any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving certain peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance thresholds, as well as any system or board that includes those circuits. There are also now licensing requirements to export a wide array of products, including networking products, destined for certain end users and for certain end uses in China. During the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, the USG also informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East.
On October 23, 2023, the USG informed us that the licensing requirements were effective immediately for shipments of our A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S products (removing the grace period granted by the official rule). Blackwell systems, such as GB200 NVL 72 and NVL 36 as well as B200 are also subject to these requirements and therefore require a license for any shipment to certain entities and to China and Country Groups D1, D4, and D5, excluding Israel. To date, we have not received licenses to ship these restricted products to China.
On January 15, 2025, the USG published the “AI Diffusion” IFR in the Federal Register. After a 120-day delayed compliance period, the IFR will, unless modified, impose a worldwide licensing requirement on all products classified under Export Control Classification Numbers, or ECCNs, 3A090.a, 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, including all related software and technology. Any system that incorporates one or more of the covered integrated circuits, or ICs, (including but not limited to NVIDIA DGX, HGX, and MGX systems) will be covered by the new licensing requirement. The licensing requirement will include future NVIDIA ICs, boards, or systems classified with ECCN 3A090.a or 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, achieving certain total processing performance and/or performance density.
Unless a license exception is available, the worldwide licensing requirements will apply to the following NVIDIA products, and any others we develop that meet the characteristics of 3A090.a or 4A090.a, including but not limited to: A100, A800, H100, H200, H800, B100, B200, GB200, L4, L40S, and RTX 6000 Ada.
The AI Diffusion IFR would divide the world into three tiers, relegating most countries to “Tier 2” status. The AI Diffusion IFR would confer special benefits on select “Universal Verified End Users”, or UVEU, and lesser benefits on “National Verified End Users”, or NVEU. The AI Diffusion IFR would have numerous effects that may negatively impact our long-term financial results and competitive position, including but not limited to the following.
The AI Diffusion IFR would reduce the market for U.S.-designed and manufactured computing products and services, by expressly limiting exports, reexports, and transfers of covered products to Tier 2 countries and companies in Tier 1 countries that are either headquartered in Tier 2, or have an ultimate parent headquartered in a Tier 2 country. These restrictions would apply to all covered products, including products sold years ago.
The AI Diffusion IFR would limit access to the market for IT services and computing infrastructure, by favoring a select number of government-approved firms that achieve UVEU status. UVEUs may choose to favor their own accelerators, platforms, and systems, rather than selecting products based on merit.
The AI Diffusion IFR would encourage our customers to invest in alternatives that are not affected by USG regulations, including foreign competition.
The AI Diffusion IFR would increase our and our customers’ costs of doing business, creating compliance challenges and risks, and impact our supply and distribution chains, which will be subject to new compliance burdens and related extraterritorial regulatory obligations.
The AI Diffusion IFR would expose U.S. providers and the U.S. industry to an enhanced risk of retaliation from other countries, in the form of tariffs, import/export controls, or other regulatory actions.
The AI Diffusion IFR’s licensing requirement could impact our ability to complete development of products in a timely manner, support existing customers using covered products, or supply customers with covered products outside the impacted regions, and may require us to transition certain operations out of one or more of the identified countries.
Following these 2022 export controls, we transitioned some operations, including certain testing, validation, and supply and distribution operations out of China and Hong Kong. Any future transitions could be costly and time consuming, and adversely affect our research and development and supply and distribution operations, as well as our revenue, during any such transition period. We expanded our Data Center product portfolio to offer new solutions, including those for which the USG does not require a license or advance notice before each shipment. To the extent that a customer requires products covered by the licensing requirements, we may seek a license for the customer. However, the licensing process is time-consuming. We have no assurance that the USG will grant such a license or that the USG will act on the license application in a timely manner or at all. Even if a license is approved, it may impose burdensome conditions that we or our customer or end users cannot or decide not to accept. The USG evaluates license requests in a closed process that does not have clear standards or an opportunity for review. For example, the Notified Advanced Computing, or “NAC,” process has not resulted in approvals for exports of products to customers in China. The license process for exports to D1 and D4 countries has been time-consuming and resulted in license conditions that are onerous, even for small-sized systems that are not able to train frontier AI models. The requirements have a disproportionate impact on NVIDIA and already have disadvantaged and may in the future disadvantage NVIDIA against certain of our competitors who sell products that are not subject to the new restrictions or may be able to acquire licenses for their products.
Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results. In the event of such change, we may be unable to sell our inventory of such products and may be unable to develop replacement products not subject to the licensing requirements, effectively excluding us from all or part of the China market, as well as other impacted markets, including the Middle East and countries designated “Tier 2” by the AI Diffusion IFR. For example, the USG has already imposed conditions to limit the ability of foreign firms to create and offer as a service large-scale GPU clusters, for example by imposing license conditions on the use of products to be exported to certain countries, and may impose additional conditions such as requiring chip tracking and throttling mechanisms that could disable or impair GPUs if certain events, including unauthorized system configuration, use, or location, are detected. The USG has already imposed export controls restricting certain gaming GPUs, and if the USG expands such controls to restrict additional gaming products, it may disrupt a significant portion of our supply and distribution chain and negatively impact sales of such products to markets outside China, including the U.S. and Europe. In addition, as the performance of the gaming GPUs increases over time, export controls may have a greater impact on our ability to compete in markets subject to those controls. Export controls may disrupt our supply and distribution chain for a substantial portion of our products, which are warehoused in and distributed from Hong Kong. Export controls restricting our ability to sell data center GPUs may also negatively impact demand for our networking products used in servers containing our GPUs. The USG may also impose export controls on our networking products, such as high-speed network interconnects, to limit the ability of downstream parties to create large clusters for frontier model training. Any new control that impacts a wider range of our products would likely have a disproportionate impact on NVIDIA and may disadvantage us against certain of our competitors that sell chips that are outside the scope of such control. Excessive or shifting export controls have already and may in the future encourage customers outside China and other impacted regions to “design-out” certain U.S. semiconductors from their products to reduce the compliance burden and risk, and to ensure that they are able to serve markets worldwide. Excessive or shifting export controls have already encouraged and may in the future encourage overseas governments to request that our customers purchase from our competitors rather than NVIDIA or other U.S. firms, harming our business, market position, and financial results. As a result, excessive or shifting export controls may negatively impact demand for our products and services not only in China, but also in other markets, such as Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Excessive or shifting export controls increase the risk of investing in U.S. advanced semiconductor products, because by the time a new product is ready for market, it may be subject to new unilateral export controls restricting its sale. At the same time, such controls may increase investment in foreign competitors, which would be less likely to be restricted by U.S. controls. If additional products are subject to worldwide licensing requirements, we may incur significant inventory provisions and excess purchase obligation charges.
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For example, in fiscal year 2023, a defect was identified in a third-party component embedded in certain Data Center products. This defect has had, and other defects may in the future have, an adverse effect on our cost and supply of components and finished goods. These costs could be significant in future periods. We recorded a net warranty liability during fiscal year 2023 primarily in connection with this defect. While we believe we have accurately recorded for warranty obligations, we may need to record additional amounts in the future if our estimate proves to be incorrect. In general, if a product liability claim regarding any of our products is brought against us, even if the alleged damage is due to the actions or inactions of a third party, such as within our supply chain, the cost of defending the claim could be significant and would divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel and harm our business. Further, our business liability insurance may be inadequate or future coverage may be unavailable on acceptable terms, which could adversely impact our financial results.
Challenges in estimating demand could become more pronounced or volatile in the future on both a global and regional basis. Extended lead times may occur if we experience other supply constraints caused by natural disasters, pandemics or other events. In addition, geopolitical Geopolitical tensions , such as those involving Taiwan and China, which comprise a significant portion of our revenue and in regions where we have rely on suppliers, contract manufacturers, and assembly partners who that are critical to our supply continuity, could have a material adverse impact on us. Publicly announced intentions by governments or other companies to purchase our products can further complicate our demand estimates, as such announcements are often non-binding and may not result in committed volumes.
The following risk factors should be considered in addition to the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The following risks could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation, which could cause our stock price to decline. Additional risks, trends and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also harm our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation.
• increased credit and collectability risks, higher borrowing costs or reduced availability of capital markets, reduced liquidity, adverse impacts on our customers and suppliers , failures of counterparties, including financial institutions ; and insurers, asset impairments, and declines in the value of our financial instruments.
We acquire and invest in businesses that offer products, services and technologies that we believe will help expand or enhance our strategic objectives. Acquisitions or investments involve significant challenges and risks and could impair our ability to grow our business, develop new products or sell our products and ultimately could have a negative impact on our financial results. If we pursue a particular transaction, we may limit our ability to enter into other transactions that could help us achieve our other strategic objectives. If we are unable to timely complete acquisitions, including due to delays and challenges in obtaining regulatory approvals, we may be unable to pursue other transactions, we may not be able to retain critical talent from the target company, technology may evolve and make the acquisition less attractive, and other changes can take place, which could reduce the anticipated benefits of the transaction and negatively impact our business. Regulators could also impose conditions that reduce the ultimate value of our acquisitions. In addition, to the extent that our perceived ability to consummate acquisitions has been is harmed, future acquisitions may be more difficult, complex or expensive. Further, our investments in publicly traded companies could create volatility in our results and may generate losses up to the value of the investment. In addition, we have invested and may continue to invest in private companies to further our strategic objectives and to support certain key business initiatives. These companies can include early-stage companies still defining their strategic direction. Many of the instruments in which we invest are non-marketable and illiquid at the time of our initial investment, and we are not always able to achieve a return. To the extent any of the companies in which we invest are not successful, we could recognize an impairment and / or lose all or part of our investment. Our investment portfolio contains industry sector concentration risks, and a decline in any one or multiple industry sectors could increase our impairment losses.
Additionally, restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on the duration of gaming activities and access to games may adversely affect our Gaming revenue, and even if we are able to participate in the China data center compute market, increased oversight of digital platform companies may adversely affect our Data Center revenue. The Chinese government may also encourage has encouraged customers to purchase from our China-based competitors and discouraged customers from purchasing, importing , or impose restrictions on the sale to certain customers of using our data center products, or including any products containing components made by our partners and suppliers China-specific product designed to comply with U.S . For example, the Chinese government announced restrictions relating to certain sales of products containing certain products made by Micron, a supplier of ours export controls . As another example, an agency of the Chinese government announced an Action Plan that endorses new standards regarding the compute performance per watt and per memory bandwidth of accelerators used in new and renovated data centers in China. If Although we are already effectively foreclosed from the China market by U.S. export controls, if those controls changed to allow us to return to the market, the Chinese government modifies could modify or implements implement the Action Plan in a way that effectively prevents us from being able to design products to meet the new standard, this which may restrict the ability of customers to use some of our data center products and may have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. Further restrictions on our products or the products of our suppliers could negatively impact our business and financial results.
In addition to export controls, the USG may impose restrictions on the import and sale of products that incorporate technologies developed or manufactured in whole or in part in China. For example, the USG is considering adopted " Connected Vehicle " restrictions on the import and sale of certain automotive products in the United States, which if adopted and interpreted broadly, could impact our ability to develop and supply solutions for our automotive customers. The USG is also considering restrictions that would limit our ability to support third-party applications and models built on open-source foundation models originating in China. Such restrictions, if implemented, would favor our foreign competitors and negatively impact our business.
We offer enterprise customers NVIDIA DGX Cloud services, which include cloud-based infrastructure, software and services for training and deploying AI models. We have partnered with CSPs to host such software and services in their data centers, and we entered and may continue to enter into multi-year cloud service agreements to support these offerings and our research and development activities. The timing and availability of these cloud services have changed and may continue to shift, impacting our revenue, expenses, and development timelines . NVIDIA DGX Cloud services , and these arrangements may not be successful and will take time, resources, and investment deliver anticipated benefits . We also offer or plan to offer standalone software solutions, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA DRIVE, and other software products. These new business models or strategies may not be successful, and we may fail to sell any meaningful standalone software or services. We may incur significant costs and may not achieve any significant revenue from these offerings.
Our competitive position has been harmed by the existing export controls, and our competitive position and future results may will be further harmed, over the long term, if there the restrictions remain in place or are further changes expanded in the USG's export controls, including further expansion of the geographic, customer, or product scope of the controls , if customers purchase product from competitors, if customers develop their own internal solution, if we are unable to provide contractual warranty or other extended service obligations, if the USG does not grant licenses in a timely manner or denies licenses to significant customers or if we incur significant transition costs. The licensing process may not be resolved before significant business opportunities evaporate. Even if the USG grants any requested licenses, the licenses have already and may in the future be temporary or , impose burdensome conditions regarding the installation, maintenance, and use of such products, or include financial or economic requirements that we or our customers or end users cannot or choose not to fulfill. The licensing requirements have already and may in the future benefit certain of our competitors, as the licensing process will make our pre-sale and post-sale technical support efforts more cumbersome and less certain and encourage customers in China , the Middle East, and other regions to pursue alternatives to our products, including semiconductor suppliers based in China, Europe, and Israel.
• lack of guaranteed supply of wafer, component components and capacity;
• Product, system security and data protection incidents or breaches and , as well as cyber-attacks could disrupt our operations and adversely affect our financial condition, stock price and reputation.
• develop or acquire secure access to new products and technologies through investments in research and development;
In October 2023, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements that became effective in our fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 for exports to China and Country Groups D1 D: 1 , D4 D: 4 , and D5 D: 5 (including but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S and RTX 4090 , GB200 NVL72, and B200 . The licensing requirements also apply to the export of products exceeding certain performance thresholds to a party headquartered in, or with an ultimate parent headquartered in, Country Group D5, including China.
Increasing use of economic sanctions and export controls has impacted and may in the future impact demand for our products or services, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Reduced demand due to export controls has and could also in the future lead to excess inventory or cause us to incur related supply charges. Additional unilateral or multilateral controls are also likely to include deemed export control limitations that negatively impact the ability of our research and development teams to execute our roadmap or other objectives in a timely manner. Additional export restrictions may not only impact our ability to serve overseas markets, but also provoke responses from foreign governments, including China, that negatively impact our supply chain or our ability to provide our products and services to customers in all markets worldwide, which could also substantially reduce our revenue. Regulators in China have inquired about our sales and efforts to supply the China market and our fulfillment of the commitments we entered at the close of our Mellanox acquisition. For example On September 15 , 2025, China's antitrust regulators in China are investigating whether complying published their preliminary finding that our compliance with applicable U.S. export controls discriminates , which required us to offer degraded products to the Chinese market, discriminated unfairly against customers in the China market and therefore violated the terms of China's approval of our Mellanox acquisition . If regulators conclude that we have failed to fulfill such commitments the terms of our Mellanox acquisition or we have violated any applicable law in China, we could be subject to financial penalties, restrictions on our ability to conduct our business, restrictions or other orders regarding our networking business, products , and services, or otherwise impact our operations in China, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition.
We have experienced periods where we receive a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of customers, and this trend may continue. Sales For fiscal year 2026, sales to one direct Customers A, B and C customer represented 12%, 11% and 11 22 % of total revenue , respectively, for fiscal year 2025 and sales to another direct customer represented 14% of total revenue , all of which were primarily attributable to the Compute & Networking segment. With several of these partners, we are selling multiple products and systems in our portfolio through their channels. Our operating results depend on sales to our partner network, as well as the ability of these partners to sell products that incorporate our technologies. We have a small number of partners that are involved in system integration with our key customers. As our system design becomes increasingly complex, system integrators may be unable to meet specifications of our key customers. Changes in our partners' or customers' business models or their ownership can reduce the number of partners available to us and harm our ability to sell our advanced data center systems to customers. In the future, these partners may decide to purchase fewer products, not to incorporate our products into their ecosystem, or to alter their purchasing patterns in some other way. Because most of our sales are made on a purchase order basis, our customers can generally cancel, change, or delay product purchase commitments with little notice to us and without penalty. Our partners or customers may develop their own solutions; our customers may purchase products from our competitors; and our partners may discontinue sales or lose market share in the markets for which they purchase our products, all of which may alter partners' or customers' purchasing patterns. Many of our indirect customers often do not purchase directly from us but through multiple OEMs, ODMs, system integrators, distributors, and other channel partners. For fiscal year 2025 We generate a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of indirect customers , an indirect customer which primarily purchases our products through system integrators and distributors, including through Customer B, is estimated to represent we estimate some individually representing 10% or more of total our revenue , attributable to the Compute & Networking segment . If end demand increases or our finished goods supply availability is concentrated near a quarter end, the system integrators, distributors, and channel partners may have limited ability to increase their credit, which could impact the timing and amount of our revenue. The loss of any of our large customers, a significant reduction in purchases by them, our inability to sell to a customer due to U.S. or other countries' trade restrictions, or any difficulties in collecting accounts receivable would likely harm our financial condition and results of operations.
We continue to increase our supply and capacity purchases with existing and new suppliers to support our demand projections and increasing complexity of our data center products. With these additions, we We expect supply constraints to be a headwind to Gaming in the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 and beyond. We have also entered and may continue to enter into prepaid manufacturing and capacity agreements to supply both current and future products. The increased purchase volumes and integration of new suppliers and contract manufacturers into our supply chain creates more complexity in managing multiple suppliers with variations in production planning, execution and logistics. Our expanding product portfolio and varying component compatibility and quality may lead to increased inventory levels. We have incurred and may in the future incur inventory provisions or impairments if our inventory or supply or capacity commitments exceed demand for our products or demand declines.
• A significant amount of our revenue stems from a limited number of partners and distributors and we have a concentration of sales to customers who purchase directly or indirectly from us , and our revenue could be adversely affected if we lose or are prevented from selling to any of these end customers.
Additional risks related relating to acquisitions include, but are not limited to:
We are monitoring the impact of the geopolitical conflict in and around Israel on our operations, including the health and safety of our approximately 4,700 6,000 employees in the region who primarily support the research and development, operations, and sales and marketing of our networking products. Some We have experienced periods where some of our employees in the region have been on active military duty for an extended period and may continue to be absent , which may cause caused limited disruption to our product development or operations. We have not experienced significant impact or expense to our business; however, if the conflict is further extended or expanded, it could impact future product development, operations, and revenue or create other uncertainty for our business.
• Increased scrutiny Scrutiny regarding our corporate sustainability practices could result in financial, reputational, or operational harm and liability.
Such restrictions could include additional unilateral or multilateral export controls on certain products or technology, including but not limited to AI technologies. As geopolitical tensions have increased, semiconductors associated with AI, including GPUs and related products, are increasingly the focus of export control restrictions proposed by stakeholders in the U.S. and its allies. The United States has imposed unilateral worldwide controls restricting GPUs and associated products, and it is likely that additional unilateral or multilateral controls will be adopted. Such controls have been and may again be very broad in scope and application, prohibit us from exporting our products to any or all customers in one or more markets, including but not limited to China and over 150 countries designated " Tier 2 " by the January 2025 AI Diffusion IFR, and could negatively impact our manufacturing, testing and warehousing locations and options, or could impose other conditions that limit our ability to serve demand abroad and could negatively and materially impact our business, revenue and financial results. Export controls and other restrictions targeting GPUs and semiconductors associated with AI, which have been imposed and are increasingly likely to be further tightened more restrictive , would further restrict limit our ability to export our technology, products, or services even though competitors may not be subject to similar restrictions , creating a competitive disadvantage for us and negatively impacting our business and financial results. Export controls targeting GPUs and semiconductors associated with AI have subjected and may in the future subject downstream users of our products to additional restrictions on the use, resale, repair, or transfer of our products, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Controls could negatively impact our cost and / or ability to provide services such as NVIDIA AI cloud services and could impact the cost and / or ability for our CSPs and customers to provide services to their end customers, even outside China.
• the availability of third-party content on our platforms, such as GeForce NOW ; .
Further, changes in tax laws or their interpretation by tax authorities in the U.S. or foreign jurisdictions could increase our future tax liability or cause other adverse tax impacts, which may materially impact our results of operations, or the way we conduct our business. Most of our income is taxable in the U.S., with a significant portion qualifying for preferential treatment as foreign-derived intangible deduction eligible income, or FDII FDDEI . If U.S. tax rates increase or the FDII FDDEI deduction is reduced, our provision for income taxes, results of operations, net income, and cash flows would be adversely affected. In addition, our tax obligations and effective tax rate in the jurisdictions in which we conduct business could increase as a result of international tax developments, including the implementation of the Two-Pillar framework led by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, which involves the reallocation of taxing rights in respect of certain multinational enterprises above a fixed profit margin to the jurisdictions in which they carry on business (referred to as Pillar One), and imposes a minimum effective corporate tax rate (referred to as Pillar Two). A number of countries in which we conduct business have enacted, or are in the process of enacting, elements of the Pillar Two rules , including the recently released " side-by-side " framework, which provides certain additional safe harbors and coordination mechanisms . Any such tax laws, or changes in any such tax laws , including those related to the side-by-side framework, may increase tax uncertainty and compliance costs and adversely affect our provision for income taxes, cash tax payments, results of operations, and financial condition.
Undiscovered vulnerabilities in our products or services could result in loss of data or intangible property, or expose our customers to unscrupulous third parties who develop and deploy malicious software programs that could attack our products or services. Defects or failure of our offerings to perform to specifications could lead to substantial damage to the products in which our offerings have been integrated by OEMs, ODMs, AIB manufacturers, automotive manufacturers, and tier 1 automotive suppliers, and to the user of such end product. Any such defect Such defects have in the past had an adverse effect on our cost and supply of components and finished goods and may in the future cause us to incur significant warranty, support, and repair or replacement costs as part of a product recall or otherwise, write-off the value of related inventory, and divert the attention of our engineering and management personnel from our product development efforts to find and correct the issue. Our efforts to remedy these issues may not be timely or satisfactory to our customers. An error or defect in new products, releases or related software drivers after commencement of commercial shipments could result in failure to achieve market acceptance, loss of design wins, temporary or permanent withdrawal from a product or market and harm to our relationships with existing and prospective customers and partners and consumers' perceptions of our brand, which would in turn negatively impact our business operations, gross margin, revenue and / or financial results. We may be required to reimburse our customers, partners or consumers, including for costs to repair or replace products in the field or in connection with indemnification obligations, or pay fines imposed by regulatory agencies.
If we overestimate demand, or if customers cancel or defer orders or choose to purchase from our competitors, we may not be able to utilize on-hand inventory or reduce purchase commitments accordingly. We have had to reduce average selling prices, including due to our channel pricing programs, increase prices for certain of our products as a result of our suppliers' increase in prices, write down our inventory, incur cancellation penalties, and record impairments, and may have to do so in the future. These impacts The impact of these risks would be amplified by our non-cancellable and non-returnable purchase orders placed in advance of our historical lead times and could be exacerbated if we need to make changes to the design of future products. The risk of these impacts has These risks have increased and may continue to increase as our purchase obligations and prepaids have grown and are expected to continue to grow and become a greater portion of our total supply. All of these factors may negatively impact our gross margins and financial results.
Export controls have and could in the future disrupt our supply chain and distribution channels, negatively impacting our ability to serve demand, including in markets outside China and for our gaming non-data center products. The possibility of additional export controls has negatively impacted and may in the future negatively impact demand for our products, benefiting competitors that offer alternatives less likely to be restricted by further controls. Repeated changes in the export control rules are likely to impose compliance burdens on our business and our customers, negatively and materially impacting our business.
Increased scrutiny Scrutiny from shareholders, regulators and others regarding our corporate sustainability practices could result in additional costs or risks and adversely impact our reputation and willingness of customers and suppliers to do business with us.
Additionally, we maintain an investment a portfolio of liquid investments for cash management purposes, including various holdings, types, and maturities. These investments are subject to general credit, liquidity, market and interest rate risks, which may be exacerbated by market downturns or events that affect global financial markets, as described above. A majority of our investment portfolio comprises USG securities. A decline in global financial markets for long periods or a downgrade of the USG credit rating due to an actual or threatened default on government debt could result in higher interest rates, a decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, reduced market liquidity or other adverse conditions. These factors could cause an unrealized or realized loss position in our investments or require us to record impairment charges.
Product transitions are complex and we often ship both new and prior architecture products simultaneously as our channel partners prepare to ship and support new products. We are generally in various stages of transitioning the architectures of our Data Center, Gaming, Professional Visualization, and Automotive products. The computing industry is experiencing a broader and faster launch cadence of accelerated computing platforms to meet a growing and diverse set of AI opportunities. We have introduced a new product and architecture cadence of our Data Center solutions where we seek to complete new computing solutions each year and provide a greater variety of Data Center offerings. The increased frequency of these transitions and the larger number of products and product configurations may magnify the challenges associated with managing our supply and demand which may further create volatility in our revenue. Qualification time for new products, customers anticipating product transitions, and channel partners reducing channel inventory of prior architectures ahead of new product introductions can reduce, or create volatility in, our revenue. Customers may delay adopting new architectures if their data center infrastructure is not ready, which could affect the timing of our revenue. We have experienced and may in the future experience reduced demand for current generation architectures when customers anticipate transitions, and we may be unable to sell multiple product architectures at the same time for current and future architecture transitions. Our financial results have been and may in the future be negatively impacted if we are unable to execute our architectural transitions as planned for any reason. The increased frequency and complexity of newly introduced products could result in unanticipated quality or production issues that could increase the magnitude of inventory provisions, warranty, or other costs or result in product delays. For example, our gross margins in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025 were negatively impacted by inventory provisions for low-yielding Blackwell material.
• Long manufacturing lead times and uncertain supply and component capacity availability, combined with a failure to estimate customer demand accurately has led and could lead to mismatches between supply and demand.
Long manufacturing lead times and uncertain supply and component capacity availability, combined with a failure to estimate customer demand accurately, has led and could lead to mismatches between supply and demand.
Demand estimates for our products, applications, and services can be incorrect, which may create volatility in our revenue or supply levels. We may not be able to generate significant revenue from them. Because our products may be used in multiple use cases and applications, it is difficult to estimate with any reasonable degree of precision the impact of generative accelerated computing and AI models on our reported revenue or forecasted demand.
Governments and regulators are also considering, and in certain cases, have imposed restrictions on the hardware, software, and systems used to develop frontier foundation models and generative AI. For example, the EU AI Act became effective on August 1, 2024 and will be fully applicable after a two-year transitional period. The EU AI Act may impact our ability to train, deploy, or release AI models in the EU. Several states are considering enacting or have already enacted regulations concerning AI technologies , with new state laws that took effect on January 1, 2026 , which may impact our ability to train, deploy, or release AI models, and increase our compliance costs. Restrictions under these and any other regulations, if implemented, could increase the costs and burdens to us and our customers, delay or halt deployment of new systems using our products, and reduce the number of new entrants and customers, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Revisions to laws or regulations or their interpretation and enforcement could also result in increased taxation, trade sanctions, the imposition of or increase to import duties or tariffs, restrictions and controls on imports or exports, or other retaliatory actions, which could have an adverse effect on our business plans or impact the timing of our shipments. Additionally, changes in the public perception of governments in the regions where we operate or plan to operate could negatively impact our business and results of operations.
Our target markets remain competitive, and competition may intensify with expanding and changing product and service offerings, industry standards, customer and market needs, new entrants and consolidations. Our competitors' products, services and technologies, including those mentioned above in this Annual Report on Form 10-K, may be cheaper or provide better functionality or features than ours, which has resulted and may in the future result in lower-than-expected selling prices or demand for our products. Some of our competitors operate their own fabrication facilities, and have longer operating histories, larger customer bases, more comprehensive IP portfolios and patent protections, more design wins, and greater financial, sales, marketing and distribution resources than we do. These competitors may be able to acquire market share and / or prevent us from doing so, more effectively identify and capitalize upon opportunities in new markets and end-user trends, more quickly transition their products, and impinge on our ability to procure sufficient foundry capacity and scarce input materials during a supply-constrained environment, which could harm our business. Some of our customers have in-house expertise and internal development capabilities similar to some of ours and can use or develop their own solutions to replace those we are providing. For example, others may offer cloud-based services that compete with our AI cloud service offerings, and we may not be able to establish market share sufficient to achieve the scale necessary to meet our business objectives. If we are unable to successfully compete in this environment, demand for our products, services and technologies could decrease and we , which may not establish meaningful revenue negatively impact our business .
• government actions or changes in governmental policies, such as export controls, increased restrictions on gaming usage, or tariffs; and
Our business and those of our suppliers and customers may also be is subject to climate-related sustainability-related laws, regulations and lawsuits. New or proposed regulations relating to carbon taxes, fuel or energy taxes, pollution limits, sustainability-related disclosure and governance and supply chain governance could result in greater direct costs, including costs associated with changes to manufacturing processes or the procurement of raw materials used in manufacturing processes, increased capital expenditures to improve facilities and equipment, higher compliance and energy costs to reduce emissions, other compliance costs, and greater indirect costs resulting from our customers and / or suppliers incurring additional compliance costs that are passed on to us. These costs and restrictions could harm our business and results of operations by increasing our expenses or requiring us to alter our operations and product design activities.
To remain competitive and successfully execute our business strategy, we must attract, retain, and motivate our executives and key employees, as well as recruit and develop exceptional and diverse talent. However, labor is subject to external factors that are beyond our control, including our industry's increasingly highly competitive market for skilled workers and leaders, and workforce participation rates. Changes in immigration and work permit regulations, or in their administration or interpretation, could impair our ability to attract , employ and retain qualified employees. Competition for talent drives up costs in the form of cash and stock-based compensation. In times of stock price volatility, as we have experienced in the past and may experience in the future, the retentive value of our stock-based compensation may decrease. Additionally, we are highly dependent on the services of our longstanding executive team. Failure to ensure effective succession planning, transfer of knowledge, and smooth transitions involving executives and key employees could hinder our strategic planning, execution, and long-term success.
We are subject to laws and regulations domestically and worldwide, affecting our operations in areas including, but not limited to, IP ownership and infringement; taxes; import and export requirements and tariffs; anti-corruption, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; business acquisitions; foreign exchange controls and cash repatriation restrictions; foreign ownership and investment; data privacy requirements; competition and antitrust; advertising; employment; product regulations; cybersecurity; environmental, health, and safety requirements; the responsible use of AI; sustainability; cryptocurrency; and consumer laws. Compliance with such requirements can be onerous and expensive, could impact our competitive position, and may negatively impact our business operations and ability to manufacture and ship our products. There can be no assurance that our employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or agents will not violate applicable laws or the policies, controls, and procedures that we have designed to help ensure compliance with such laws, and violations could result in fines, criminal sanctions against us, our officers, or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business, and damage to our reputation. Changes to the laws, rules and regulations to which we are subject, or changes to their interpretation and enforcement, could lead to materially greater compliance and other costs, and / or further restrictions on our ability to manufacture and supply our products and operate our business. For example, we may face increased compliance costs as a result of changes or increases in antitrust legislation, regulation, administrative rule making, increased focus from regulators on cybersecurity vulnerabilities and risks. Our position in markets relating to AI has led to increased interest in our business from regulators worldwide, including the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea , Japan, and China. For example, the French Competition Authority collected information from us regarding our business and competition in the graphics card and cloud service provider CSP market as part of an ongoing inquiry into competition in those markets. We have also received, and continue to receive, broad requests for information from competition regulators in the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Korea regarding our sales of GPUs and other NVIDIA products, our efforts to allocate supply, foundation models and our investments, partnerships and other agreements with companies developing foundation models, the markets in which we compete and our competition, our strategies, roadmaps, and efforts to develop, market, and sell hardware, software, and system solutions, and our agreements with customers, suppliers, and partners. We expect to receive additional requests for information in the future. Such requests may have been and are likely to be expensive and burdensome and could negatively impact our business and our relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners.
• reduced profitability of customers, which may cause them to scale back operations, exit businesses, file for bankruptcy protection and potentially cease operations, or lead to mergers, consolidations or strategic alliances among other companies, which could adversely affect our ability to compete effectively; and
We currently and will likely continue to face legal, administrative and regulatory proceedings, claims, demands and / or investigations involving shareholder, consumer, competition , intellectual property and / or other issues relating to our business. For example, we are defending a securities class action lawsuit from multiple shareholders asserting claims that we and certain of our officers made false and / or misleading statements related to channel inventory and the impact of cryptocurrency mining on GPU demand in 2017 and 2018. Litigation and regulatory proceedings are inherently uncertain, and adverse rulings could occur, including monetary damages or fines, or an injunction stopping us from manufacturing or selling certain products, engaging in certain business practices, or requiring other remedies, such as compulsory licensing of patents. An unfavorable outcome or settlement may result in a material adverse impact. Regardless of the outcome, litigation can be costly, time-consuming, and disruptive to our operations.
The use of our GPUs for new, mercurial, or trendy applications, has impacted and can impact in the future , demand for our products, including by leading to inconsistent spikes and drops in demand. For example, several years ago, our Gaming GPUs began to be used for mining digital currencies, such as Ethereum. It is difficult for us to estimate with any reasonable degree of precision the past or current impact of cryptocurrency mining, or forecast the future impact of cryptocurrency mining, on demand for our products. Volatility in the cryptocurrency market, including new compute technologies, price changes in cryptocurrencies, government cryptocurrency policies and regulations, new cryptocurrency standards and changes in the method of verifying blockchain transactions, has impacted and can in the future impact cryptocurrency mining and demand for our products and can further impact our ability to estimate demand for our products. Changes to cryptocurrency standards and processes including, but not limited to, the Ethereum 2.0 merge in 2022, have reduced and may in the future decrease the usage of GPUs for Ethereum mining. This has created and may in the future create increased aftermarket sales of our GPUs, which could negatively impact retail prices for our GPUs and reduce demand for our new GPUs. In general, our new products or previously sold products may be resold online or on the unauthorized " gray market, " which also makes demand forecasting difficult. Gray market products and reseller marketplaces compete with our new products and distribution channels. Our inability to accurately predict our demand that arises from new use cases may create volatility in our revenue.
Concerns relating to the responsible use of new and evolving technologies, such as AI, in our products and services may result in reputational or financial harm and liability and may cause us to incur costs to resolve such issues. We are increasingly building AI capabilities and protections into many of our products and services, and we also offer stand-alone AI applications. AI poses emerging legal, social, and ethical issues and presents risks and challenges that could affect its adoption, and therefore our business. If we enable or offer solutions that draw controversy due to their perceived or actual impact on society, such as AI solutions that have unintended consequences, infringe copyright or rights of publicity, or are controversial because of their impact on human rights, privacy, employment or other social, economic or political issues, or if we are unable to develop implement effective internal policies and frameworks relating to the responsible development and use of AI models and systems offered through our sales channels, we may experience brand or reputational harm, competitive harm or legal liability. Leveraging AI capabilities to potentially improve our internal functions and operations may present further risks, costs, and challenges. Complying with multiple regulations from different jurisdictions related to AI may further increase our cost of doing business, may change the way that we operate in certain jurisdictions, and may impede our ability to offer certain products and services in certain jurisdictions if we are unable to comply with regulations. Compliance with existing and proposed government regulation of AI, including in jurisdictions such as the European Union, may further increase the cost of related research and development, and create additional reporting and / or transparency requirements. For example, regulation adopted in response to the European Union Code of Practice for General Purpose Artificial Intelligence could require us to notify the European Commission regarding details of some of our Trustworthy AI processes related to our risk framework. Furthermore, changes in AI-related regulation could disproportionately impact and disadvantage us and require us to change our business practices, which may negatively impact our financial results. Our failure to adequately address concerns and regulations relating to the responsible use of AI by us or others could undermine public confidence in AI and slow adoption of AI in our products and services or cause reputational or financial harm.
Factors that have caused and / or could in the future cause disruptions to our worldwide operations include: natural disasters, extreme weather conditions, power or water shortages, critical infrastructure failures, telecommunications failures, supplier disruptions, terrorist attacks, acts of violence, political and / or civil unrest, acts of war or other military actions, epidemics or pandemics, abrupt regulatory changes, and other natural or man-made disasters and catastrophic events. Our corporate headquarters, a large portion of our current data center capacity, and a portion of our research and development activities are located in California, and other critical business operations, finished goods inventory and some of our suppliers are located in Asia, making our operations vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, wildfires or other business disruptions occurring in these geographical areas. Catastrophic events can also have an impact on third-party vendors who provide us critical infrastructure services for IT and research and development systems and personnel. Geopolitical and domestic political developments and other events beyond our control can increase economic volatility globally. Political instability, changes in government or adverse political developments in or around any of the major countries in which we do business may harm our business, financial condition , and results of operations. Worldwide geopolitical tensions and conflicts, including but not limited to China, Hong Kong, Israel, Korea and Taiwan where the manufacture of our product components and final assembly of our products are concentrated may result in changing regulatory requirements, and other disruptions that could impact our operations and operating strategies, product demand, access to global markets, hiring, and profitability. For example, other countries have restricted and may continue in the future to restrict business with the State of Israel, where we have engineering, sales support operations and manufacturing, and companies with Israeli operations, including by economic boycotts. Our operations could be harmed and our costs could increase if manufacturing, logistics, or other operations are disrupted for any reason, including natural disasters, high heat events, water shortages, power shortages, information technology system failures or cyber-attacks, military actions or economic, and business, labor, environmental, public health, or political issues. The ultimate impact on us, our third-party foundries and other suppliers of being located and consolidated in certain geographical areas is unknown. In the event a disaster, war, or catastrophic event affects us, the third-party systems on which we rely, or our customers, our business could be harmed as a result of declines in revenue, increases in expenses, and substantial expenditures and time spent to fully resume operations. Our business continuity and disaster recovery planning may not be sufficient for all eventualities. All of these risks and conditions could materially adversely affect our future sales and operating results.
11 paragraphs split, merged or with only figures updated
•failures of counterparties, including financial institutions and insurers, asset impairments, and declines in the value of our financial instruments.
Our investment portfolio contains industry sector concentration risks, and a decline in any one or multiple industry sectors could increase our impairment losses.
In August 2022, the USG announced export restrictions and export licensing requirements targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries. These restrictions impacted exports of certain chips, as well as software, hardware, equipment and technology used to develop, produce and manufacture certain chips to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia, and specifically impact our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits.
In July 2023, the USG also informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East.
Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results. In the event of such change, we may be unable to sell our inventory of such products and may be unable to develop replacement products not subject to the licensing requirements.
The USG already imposed export controls restricting certain gaming GPUs, and if the USG expands such controls to restrict additional gaming products, it may disrupt a significant portion of our supply and distribution chain and negatively impact sales of such products to markets outside China, including the U.S. and Europe. In addition, as the performance of the gaming GPUs increases over time, export controls may have a greater impact on our ability to compete in markets subject to those controls. Export controls may disrupt our supply and distribution chain for a substantial portion of our products, which are warehoused in and distributed from Hong Kong.
Export controls restricting our ability to sell data center GPUs may also negatively impact demand for our networking products used in servers containing our GPUs. The USG may also impose export controls on our networking products, such as high-speed network interconnects, to limit the ability of downstream parties to create large clusters for frontier model training.
Export controls have and are likely in the future to have a disproportionate impact on NVIDIA and may disadvantage us against certain of our competitors that sell chips that are outside the scope of such control. Export controls have already and may in the future encourage customers outside China and other impacted regions to “design-out” certain U.S. semiconductors from their products to reduce the compliance burden and risk, and to ensure that they are able to serve markets worldwide. Export controls have already encouraged and may in the future encourage overseas governments to request that our customers purchase from our competitors rather than NVIDIA or other U.S. firms, harming our business, market position, and financial results.
As a result, export controls have in the past and may in the future negatively impact demand for our products and services not only in China, but also in other markets, such as Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Export controls increase the risk of investing in U.S. advanced semiconductor products, because by the time a new product is ready for market, it may be subject to new unilateral export controls restricting its sale, resulting in excess inventory and purchase obligations as we recently experienced with the H20. At the same time, such controls may increase investment in foreign competitors, which would be less likely to be restricted by U.S. controls.
The following risk factors should be considered in addition to the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. The following risks could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation, which could cause our stock price to decline. Additional risks, trends and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also harm our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation.
We sell our products internationally, and we also have operations and conduct business internationally. Our semiconductor wafers are manufactured, assembled, tested and packaged by third parties located outside of the United States, and we generated 53 31 % of our revenue in fiscal year 2025 2026 from sales outside the United States. The market in China, where our offerings are limited by export controls, is highly competitive and we expect it to remain competitive going forward. The global nature of our business subjects us to a number of risks and uncertainties, which have had in the past and could in the future have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations. These include domestic and international economic and political conditions in countries in which we and our suppliers and manufacturers do business, government lockdowns to control case spread of global or local health issues, differing legal standards with respect to protection of IP and employment practices, different domestic and international business and cultural practices, disruptions to capital markets, counter-inflation policies, currency fluctuations, natural disasters, acts of war or other military actions, terrorism, public health issues, restrictions on international trade, such as tariffs, sanctions, and other controls on imports or exports, and catastrophic events.
Item 1C. Cybersecurity
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We have designated a Chief Security Officer that reports , reporting to our Senior Vice President of Software Engineering , to manage our oversee the identification, assessment , and management of material cybersecurity risks from cybersecurity threats . Our Chief Security Officer's cybersecurity expertise includes over 17 18 years of combined government and private sector assignments.
We have in place certain infrastructure, systems, policies, and procedures that are designed to proactively prevent or reduce the impact of, and reactively address circumstances that arise when unexpected , events such as a cybersecurity incident occur. These include processes for assessing, identifying, and managing material risks from cybersecurity threats. Our information security management program programs generally follows follow certain processes outlined in frameworks such as the ISO 27001 international standard for Information Security information security management and we evaluate and evolve our security measures as appropriate. We consult with external parties, such as cybersecurity firms and risk management and governance experts, on risk management and strategy.
We also have a vendor risk assessment process consisting of, depending on the nature and sensitivity of the supplier and data they process on our behalf, the distribution and review of supplier questionnaires designed to help us evaluate cybersecurity risks that we may encounter when working with third parties that have access to confidential and other sensitive company information. We take steps designed to ensure review that such vendors have implemented data privacy and security controls that help mitigate the cybersecurity risks associated with these vendors, depending on the nature and sensitivity of the supplier and data they process on our behalf. We routinely assess our high-risk suppliers' conformance to industry standards (e.g., ISO 27001, ISO 28001, and C-TPAT), and we evaluate them for additional information, product, and physical security requirements.
Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations
The availability of data centers, energy, and capital to support the buildout of NVIDIA AI infrastructure by our customers and partners is crucial, and any shortage of these or other necessary resources could impact our future revenue and financial performance. Expanding energy capacity to meet demand is a complex, multi-year process that involves significant regulatory, technical, and construction challenges. In addition, access to capital can be particularly constrained for less-capitalized companies, which may face difficulties securing financing for large-scale infrastructure projects. These limitations could delay customer and partner deployments or reduce the scale of accelerated computing and AI adoption.
We continue to execute Data Center compute product introductions, bringing new advanced architectures on a one-year product cadence, including our Rubin platform. We began shipping production units of our new Blackwell Ultra platforms including GB300 in the second quarter of fiscal year 2026. The complexity of our product transitions and sophisticated system configurations has and may in the future cause delays in production and create challenges in managing supply and demand. This could further result in revenue volatility, quality issues, increased inventory provisions, decreases in product yields and higher material costs, and/or increased warranty costs. Customers may postpone purchasing new architectures or may adopt new technologies more gradually than anticipated, affecting our revenue timing and supply chain expenses.
In April 2025, the USG informed us that a license is required for exports of our H20 product into the China market. As a result of these requirements, we incurred a $4.5 billion charge in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 associated with H20 for excess inventory and purchase obligations, as the demand for H20 diminished. In August 2025, the USG granted licenses that would allow us to ship certain H20 products to certain China-based customers. We generated approximately $60 million in H20 revenue under those licenses.
In February 2026, the USG granted a license that would allow us to ship small amounts of H200 products to specific China-based customers. To date, we have not generated any revenue under the H200 licensing program, and do not yet know whether any imports will be allowed into China. The license requires that the H200s go through an inspection process in the United States prior to any shipment to the customer. As a result, any H200 shipped under the new licensing program will be subject to a 25% tariff upon importation into the United States.
The recent rise in high-quality open-source foundation models is making advanced AI capabilities broadly accessible. Open-source AI is dependent on developer adoption and if deployed on our competitors’ platforms, it could reduce demand for our products and services.
While currently our supply chain is mainly concentrated in Asia, we are expanding into the U.S. and Latin America. These moves are expected to strengthen our supply chain, add resiliency and redundancy, and meet the growing demand for AI infrastructure. Our ability to increase manufacturing capabilities will depend on the local region's manufacturing ecosystem's capacity to ramp production supply to the required volume and on a timely basis.
We have made, and expect to continue making, investments that support our technology roadmap and the broader AI ecosystem. In fiscal year 2026, we made the following investments:
•We invested $17.5 billion in private companies and infrastructure funds, primarily to support early‑stage startups. These investments include AI model makers that purchase our products directly or through CSPs. Many of these investments are illiquid and non‑marketable. The related early-stage startups may not become profitable in the near term, or at all, and there can be no assurance that we will realize a return on our investments.
•We made investments in publicly-held equity securities where the value may fluctuate significantly due to changes in stock prices and could adversely affect our financial results.
•To support the build-out of complex datacenter infrastructures, we enter into commercial arrangements, including guarantees with partners. We provided $3.5 billion in land, power, and shell guarantees to early‑stage companies, generally over multi‑year periods. If the escrow and the partners' operating activities are not sufficient to cover an event of default under these guarantees, we may elect to assume the underlying leases for internal use or sublease them to third parties.
Refer to “Item 1A. Risk Factors – Risks Related to Regulatory, Legal, Our Stock and Other Matters” for a further discussion of the potential impact of these factors on our business.
Gaming revenue for fiscal year 2026 was up 41% from a year ago, driven by strong Blackwell demand. We expect supply constraints to be a headwind to Gaming in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 and beyond.
Gross margin decreased in fiscal year 2026 as our business model transitioned from offering Hopper HGX systems to Blackwell full-scale datacenter solutions. The gross margin decrease was also impacted by a $4.5 billion charge associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations.
Non-Marketable Equity Securities
Non-marketable equity securities consist of investments in private companies without readily determinable fair values. They are measured at cost minus impairment, if any, and are adjusted for observable price changes in orderly transactions for a similar investment in the same issuer (the measurement alternative). These adjustments may require use of unobservable inputs.
We assess impairment quarterly based on qualitative and quantitative factors, including the investee’s operating performance and market trends.
Direct Customers – For fiscal year 2026, sales to one direct customer represented 22% of total revenue and sales to another direct customer represented 14% of total revenue, all of which were primarily attributable to the Compute & Networking segment.
For fiscal year 2025, sales to one direct customer represented 12% of total revenue and sales to two direct customers each represented 11% of total revenue, all of which were primarily attributable to the Compute & Networking segment.
For fiscal year 2024, sales to one direct customer represented 13% of total revenue, and were primarily attributable to the Compute & Networking segment.
Gross margins decreased to 71.1% in fiscal year 2026 from 75.0% in fiscal year 2025 as our business model transitioned from offering Hopper HGX systems to Blackwell full-scale datacenter solutions and a $4.5 billion charge associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026.
The effective tax rate increased primarily due to a lower percentage of tax benefits from stock-based compensation, FDDEI, and U.S. federal research tax credit relative to the increase in income before income tax.
In July 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) was enacted into law and contains several changes to key U.S. federal income tax laws. We have recognized the tax effects of currently effective OBBBA provisions in our results for fiscal year 2026. We will continue to evaluate the impact of these legislative changes as tax authorities provide additional guidance and interpretation.
As of January 25, 2026, based on recent jurisdictional taxable income and expected future earnings, we concluded certain state deferred tax assets are more likely than not realizable and released $711 million of valuation allowance.
Our fixed income security investments include highly rated, diversified investment types and credit exposures with shorter maturities.
From January 26, 2026 through February 20, 2026, we repurchased 8 million shares for $1.5 billion pursuant to a pre-established trading plan. We may execute repurchases from time to time, subject to market conditions, operating requirements, and other investment opportunities, in the open market, in privately negotiated transactions, pursuant to a Rule 10b5-1 trading plan or in structured share repurchase agreements in compliance with Rule 10b-18 of the Exchange Act. Our share repurchase program may be suspended at any time at our discretion.
In January 2026, we increased the amount of our commercial paper program, pursuant to which we may issue unsecured commercial paper notes from time to time or all at once up to $25.0 billion. As of January 25, 2026, no commercial paper was outstanding. We will continue to evaluate issuing commercial paper as a component of our overall liquidity strategy.
We expect to continue investing in our ecosystem. We are finalizing an investment and partnership agreement with OpenAI. There is no assurance that we will enter into an investment and partnership agreement with OpenAI or that a transaction will be completed. Refer to Item 1A. Risk Factors for additional information regarding our investments.
Demand and Supply
Demand estimates for our products, applications, and services can be incorrect and create volatility in our revenue or supply levels. We may not be able to generate significant revenue from them. Advancements in accelerated computing and generative AI models, along with the growth in model complexity and scale, have driven increased demand for our Data Center systems.
We continue to increase our supply and capacity purchases with existing and new suppliers to support our demand projections and increasing complexity of our data center products. With these additions, we have also entered and may continue to enter into prepaid manufacturing and capacity agreements to supply both current and future products. The increased purchase volumes and integration of new suppliers and contract manufacturers into our supply chain creates more complexity in managing multiple suppliers with variations in production planning, execution and logistics. Our expanding product portfolio and varying component compatibility and quality may lead to increased inventory levels. We have incurred and may in the future incur inventory provisions or impairments if our inventory or supply or capacity commitments exceed demand for our products or demand declines.
Product Transitions and New Product Introductions
Product transitions are complex and we often ship both new and prior architecture products simultaneously as our channel partners prepare to ship and support new products. We are generally in various stages of transitioning the architectures of our Data Center, Gaming, Professional Visualization, and Automotive products. The computing industry is experiencing a broader and faster launch cadence of accelerated computing platforms to meet a growing and diverse set of AI opportunities. We have introduced a new product and architecture cadence of our Data Center solutions where we seek to complete new computing solutions each year and provide a greater variety of Data Center offerings. The increased frequency of these transitions and the larger number of products and product configurations may magnify the challenges associated with managing our supply and demand which may further create volatility in our revenue. The increased frequency and complexity of newly introduced products could result in quality or production issues that could increase inventory provisions, warranty, or other costs or result in product delays. We incur significant engineering development resources for new products, and changes to our product roadmap may impact our ability to develop other products or adequately manage our supply chain cost. Customers may delay purchasing existing products as we increase the frequency of new products or may not be able to adopt our new products as fast as forecasted, both impacting the timing of our revenue and supply chain cost. While we have managed prior product transitions and have sold multiple product architectures at the same time, these transitions are difficult, may impair our ability to predict demand and impact our supply mix, and may cause us to incur additional costs.
Global Trade
In August 2022, the USG announced licensing requirements that, with certain exceptions, impact exports to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia of our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits.
In July 2023, the USG informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East.
In October 2023, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements that became effective in our fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 for exports to China and Country Groups D1, D4, and D5 (including but not limited to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S and RTX 4090. The licensing requirements also apply to the export of products exceeding certain performance thresholds to a party headquartered in, or with an ultimate parent headquartered in, Country Group D5, including China. On October 23, 2023, the USG informed us that the licensing requirements were effective immediately for shipments of our A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S products (removing the grace period granted by the official rule). Blackwell systems, such as GB200 NVL 72 and NVL 36 as well as B200 are also subject to these requirements and therefore require a license for any shipment to certain entities and to China and Country Groups D1, D4 and D5, excluding Israel. To date, we have not received licenses to ship these restricted products to China. Additionally, we understand that partners and customers have also not received a license to ship these restricted products.
We expanded our Data Center product portfolio to offer new solutions, including those for which the USG does not require a license or advance notice before each shipment. We ramped new products designed specifically for China that do not require an export control license. Our Data Center revenue in China grew in fiscal year 2025. As a percentage of total Data Center revenue, it remains well below levels seen prior to the onset of export controls in October 2023. The market in China for datacenter solutions remains competitive. We will continue to comply with export controls while serving our customers. To the extent that a customer requires products covered by the licensing requirements, we may seek a license for the customer but have no assurance that the USG will grant such a license, or that the USG will act on the license application in a timely manner or at all.
On January 15, 2025, the USG published the “AI Diffusion” IFR in the Federal Register. After a 120-day delayed compliance period, the IFR will, unless modified, impose a worldwide licensing requirement on all products classified under Export Control Classification Numbers, or ECCNs, 3A090.a, 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, including all related software and technology. Any system that incorporates one or more of the covered integrated circuits, or ICs, (including but not limited to NVIDIA DGX, HGX, and MGX systems) will be covered by the new licensing requirement. The licensing requirement will include future NVIDIA ICs, boards, or systems classified with ECCN 3A090.a or 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, achieving certain total processing performance and/or performance density.
Unless a license exception is available, the worldwide licensing requirements will apply to the following NVIDIA products, and any others we develop that meet the characteristics of 3A090.a or 4A090.a, including but not limited to: A100, A800, H100, H200, H800, B100, B200, GB200, L4, L40S, and RTX 6000 Ada.
Our competitive position has been harmed by the existing export controls, and our competitive position and future results may be further harmed, over the long term, if there are further changes in the USG’s export controls. Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results. In the event of such change, we may be unable to sell our inventory of such products and may be unable to develop replacement products not subject to the licensing requirements, effectively excluding us from all or part of the China market, as well as other impacted markets, including the Middle East and countries designated “Tier 2” by the AI Diffusion IFR. In addition to export controls, the USG may impose restrictions on the import and sale of products that incorporate technologies developed or manufactured in whole or in part in China. For example, the USG is considering restrictions on the import and sale of certain automotive products in the United States, which if adopted and interpreted broadly, could impact our ability to develop and supply solutions for our automotive customers.
While we work to enhance the resiliency and redundancy of our supply chain, which is currently concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, new and existing export controls or changes to existing export controls could limit alternative manufacturing locations and negatively impact our business. Refer to “Item 1A. Risk Factors – Risks Related to Regulatory, Legal, Our Stock and Other Matters” for a discussion of this potential impact.
Macroeconomic Factors
Israel and Regional Conflicts
We are monitoring the impact of the geopolitical conflict in and around Israel on our operations, including the health and safety of our approximately 4,700 employees in the region who primarily support the research and development, operations, and sales and marketing of our networking products. Our global supply chain for our networking products has not experienced any significant impact. Some of our employees in the region have been on active military duty for an extended period and may continue to be absent, which may cause disruption to our product development or operations. We have not experienced significant impact or expense to our business; however, if the conflict is further extended or expanded, it could impact future product development, operations, and revenue or create other uncertainty for our business.
We specialize in markets where our computing platforms can provide tremendous acceleration for applications. These platforms incorporate processors, interconnects, software, algorithms, systems, and services to deliver unique value. Our platforms address four large markets where our expertise is critical: Data Center, Gaming, Professional Visualization, and Automotive.
Professional Visualization revenue for fiscal year 2025 was up 21% from a year ago, driven by the continued ramp of Ada RTX GPU workstations for use cases such as generative AI-powered design, simulation, and engineering.
Gross margin increased in fiscal year 2025 driven by a higher mix of Data Center revenue.
Revenue from License and Development Arrangements is recognized over the period in which the development services are performed. Each fiscal reporting period, we measure progress to completion based on actual cost incurred to date as a percentage of the estimated total cost required to complete each project. Estimated total cost for each project includes a forecast of internal engineer personnel time expected to be incurred and other third-party costs as applicable.
All Other operating loss – The year over year increase was due to an increase in stock-based compensation expense reflecting employee growth and compensation increases.
Direct Customers – Sales to direct customers which represented 10% or more of total revenue, all of which were primarily attributable to the Compute & Networking segment, are presented in the following table:
* Less than 10% of total revenue.
No customer represented 10% or more of total revenue for fiscal year 2023.
We have experienced periods where we receive a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of customers, and this trend may continue.
Gross margins increased to 75.0% in fiscal year 2025 from 72.7% in fiscal year 2024. The year over year increase was primarily driven by a higher mix of Data Center revenue.
The effective tax rate increased primarily due to higher pre-tax income and a prior year discrete benefit due to an audit resolution.
Given our current and possible future earnings, we believe that we may release the valuation allowance associated with certain state deferred tax assets in the near term, which would decrease our income tax expense for the period the release is recorded. The timing and amount of the valuation allowance release could vary based on our assessment of all available information.
Our investment policy requires the purchase of highly-rated fixed income securities, the diversification of investment types and credit exposures, and certain maturity limits on our portfolio.
From January 27, 2025 through February 21, 2025, we repurchased 29 million shares for $3.7 billion pursuant to a pre-established trading plan. Our share repurchase program aims to offset dilution from shares issued to employees while maintaining adequate liquidity to meet our operating requirements. We may pursue additional share repurchases as we weigh market factors and other investment opportunities.
We have a $575 million commercial paper program to support general corporate purposes. As of January 26, 2025, we had no commercial paper outstanding.
Climate Change
To date, there has been no material impact to our results of operations associated with global sustainability regulations, compliance, costs from sourcing renewable energy or climate-related business trends.
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Indirect Customers - Indirect customer revenue is an estimation based upon multiple factors including customer purchase order information, product specifications, internal sales data, and other sources. Actual indirect customer revenue may differ from our estimates. For fiscal year 2025, an indirect customer which Indirect customers primarily purchases purchase our products through system integrators and distributors . We generate a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of indirect customers , including through Direct Customer B, is estimated to represent some individually representing 10% or more of total our revenue , attributable . Certain companies purchase cloud and related services through various direct and indirect customers. We estimate that one AI research and deployment company contributed to the Compute & Networking segment a meaningful amount of our revenue purchasing cloud services from our customers in fiscal year 2026 .
Revenue growth in fiscal year 2025 2026 was driven by data center compute and networking platforms for accelerated computing and AI solutions. Demand for Our Blackwell architectures represented the majority of our Hopper architecture drove our significant growth for the full year Data Center revenue . We began shipping production systems of the Blackwell architecture in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025.
Data Center revenue for fiscal year 2025 2026 was up 142 68 % from a year ago. The strong year-on-year growth was driven by demand for our Hopper architecture the major platform shifts - accelerated computing platform used for large language models, recommendation engines, and generative AI applications . We began shipping production systems of the Blackwell architecture in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025.
Compute & Networking revenue - The year over year increase was due to strong demand for our driven by the major platform shifts - accelerated computing and AI solutions . Revenue from Data Center computing grew 162 59 % driven primarily by demand for our Hopper Blackwell computing platform used for large language models, recommendation engines, and generative AI applications . Revenue from Data Center networking grew 51 142 % driven by the introduction and continued ramp of NVLink compute fabric for GB200 and GB300 systems and the growth of Ethernet for AI revenue, which includes Spectrum-X end-to-end ethernet platform and InfiniBand platforms .
Gaming Professional Visualization revenue for fiscal year 2025 2026 was up 9 70 % from a year ago, driven by sales exceptional demand for Blackwell as well as the launch of our GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs new DGX Spark .
Cash used in investing activities increased in fiscal year 2025 2026 compared to fiscal year 2024 2025 , primarily driven by net higher purchases of marketable equity investment securities , and purchase the execution of land, property and equipment a non-exclusive license agreement with Groq .
Reportable segment operating income - The year over year increase in Compute & Networking segment operating income was driven by growth in revenue , partially offset by a $4.5 billion charge associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 . The year over year decrease increase in Graphics segment operating income was driven by an increase of 44% in segment operating expenses, partially offset by the growth in revenue.
Total Other Income (Expense) , Net
Revenue by geographic region is designated based on the billing location even if of the revenue headquarters of direct customers. The end customer and shipping location may be attributable to indirect different from our customers in a different ' headquarters location. Revenue from sales to customers headquartered outside of the United States accounted for 53 31 % and 56 41 % of total revenue for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 , respectively.
Our effective tax rates for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 were lower than the U.S. federal statutory rate of 21 21.0 % primarily due primarily to tax benefits from the FDII deduction FDDEI , stock-based compensation, the U.S. federal research tax credit, and income earned in jurisdictions that are subject to taxes at rates lower than the U.S. federal statutory tax rate , and the U.S . Our effective federal research tax rate for fiscal year 2024 was additionally benefited by the audit resolution credit .
We refer to customers who purchase products directly from NVIDIA as direct customers, such as AIBs, distributors, ODMs, OEMs, CSPs, AI model makers, and system integrators. We have certain Certain direct customers that may purchase products directly from NVIDIA and may use either internal resources or third-party system integrators to complete their build. We also have refer to indirect customers , as those who purchase products through our direct customers; indirect customers include CSPs, consumer internet companies Neocloud builders, AI model makers , enterprises, and public sector entities. Our revenue is concentrated among a limited number of direct and indirect customers and this trend may continue.
Provisions for inventory and excess inventory purchase obligations totaled $ 3.7 7.2 billion and $ 2.2 3.7 billion for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 , respectively , including $4.5 billion associated with H20 excess inventory and purchase obligations for the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 . Sales of previously reserved inventory and settlements of excess inventory purchase obligations resulted in a provision release of $ 689 million 1.5 billion and $ 540 689 million for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 , respectively. The net effect on our gross margin was an unfavorable impact of 2.3 2.6 % and 2.7 2.3 % in fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 , respectively.
Except for approximately $1.7 billion of cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities held outside the U.S. for which we have not accrued any related foreign or state taxes if we repatriate these amounts to the U.S., substantially all of our cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities held outside the U.S. at the end of fiscal year 2025 2026 are available for use in the U.S. without incurring additional U.S. federal income taxes. Our first quarter of any fiscal year (including fiscal year 2027) generally does not include any estimated federal and state income tax payments and our second quarter of any fiscal year (including fiscal year 2027) generally includes two estimated federal and state income tax payments.
The increases in research and development expenses for fiscal year 2025 2026 were driven by a 32 29 % increase in compensation and benefits expense , including stock-based compensation, reflecting employee growth and compensation increases , and a 100 79 % increase in compute and infrastructure , and a 234% increase in engineering development costs for new product introductions .
Cash used in financing activities increased in fiscal year 2025 2026 compared to fiscal year 2024 2025 , mainly due to higher share repurchases and higher tax payments related to RSUs .
Operating expenses for fiscal year 2025 2026 were up 45 41 % from a year ago, driven by higher compensation and benefits expenses due to employee growth and compensation increases, and engineering development, compute and infrastructure costs for new product introductions .
Graphics revenue - The year over year increase was driven by sales of our GeForce RTX 40 Series GPUs Blackwell architecture .
Cash provided by operating activities increased in fiscal year 2025 2026 compared to fiscal year 2024 2025 , due to growth in higher revenue.
Automotive revenue for fiscal year 2025 2026 was up 55 39 % from a year ago, driven by sales continued adoption of our self-driving platforms.
Other income , net primarily consists of realized or unrealized gains and losses from investments in non-marketable equity securities, publicly-held equity securities, and the impact of changes in foreign currency rates. The change in Other income , net, compared to fiscal year 2024 2025 , was primarily driven by an increase unrealized gains in fair value of our non-marketable equity securities and publicly-held equity securities , including gains from our previously announced investment in Intel's common stock . Refer to Note 7 and 8 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information regarding our non-marketable equity securities.
On August 26, 2024 2025 , our Board of Directors approved an additional $ 50 60.0 billion to our in share repurchase authorization, without expiration. In fiscal year 2025 2026 , we repurchased 310 282 million shares of our common stock for $ 34.0 40.4 billion. As of January 26 25 , 2025 2026 , we were authorized, subject to certain specifications, to repurchase up to $ 38.7 58.5 billion of our common stock.
For a description descriptions of our facility lease guarantees, long-term debt, purchase obligations commitments , and operating lease obligations, refer to Note 10, Note 11, Note 12, and Note 17 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, respectively.
Unrecognized tax benefits of $ 2.2 4.0 billion, which includes related interest and penalties of $ 251 374 million, were recorded in non-current income tax payable at the end of fiscal year 2025 2026 . We are unable to estimate the timing of any potential tax liability, interest payments, or penalties in individual years due to uncertainties in the underlying income tax positions and the timing of the effective settlement of such tax positions. We are currently under examination by the Internal Revenue Service for our fiscal years 2023 and 2024. Refer to Note 13 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for further information.
NVIDIA pioneered accelerated computing to help solve the most challenging computational problems. Since our original focus on PC graphics, we have expanded to several other large and important computationally intensive fields. Fueled by the sustained demand for exceptional 3D graphics and the scale of the gaming market, NVIDIA has leveraged its GPU architecture to create platforms for scientific computing, AI, data science, AV autonomous vehicles , robotics, and digital twin applications. NVIDIA is now a data center scale AI infrastructure company reshaping all industries.
Macroeconomic factors, including tariffs, inflation, interest rate changes, capital market volatility, global supply chain constraints, tariffs, and global economic and geopolitical developments, may have direct and indirect impacts on our results of operations, particularly demand for our products. While difficult to isolate and quantify, these macroeconomic factors impact our supply chain and manufacturing costs, employee wages, costs for capital equipment and , the value of our investments , revenue and competitive position . Our product and solution pricing generally does not fluctuate with short-term changes in our costs. Within our supply chain, we continuously manage product availability and costs with our vendors.
Our primary sources of liquidity include cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities, and cash generated by our operations. As of January 26 25 , 2025 2026 , we had $ 43.2 62.6 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities. We believe that we have sufficient liquidity to meet our operating requirements for at least the next twelve months and thereafter for the foreseeable future, including our future supply obligations and share purchases . We continuously evaluate our liquidity and capital resources, including our access to external capital, to ensure we can finance future capital requirements.
The increase in interest income was primarily due to growth in cash, cash equivalents, and marketable debt securities.
The increases in sales, general and administrative expenses for fiscal year 2025 2026 were primarily driven by compensation and benefits expense , including stock-based compensation, reflecting employee growth and compensation increases.
Our marketable securities consist of publicly-held equity securities, debt securities issued by the U.S. government and its agencies, highly rated highly-rated corporations and financial institutions, and foreign government entities, as well as certificates of deposit issued by highly rated highly-rated financial institutions. These marketable securities are primarily denominated in U.S. dollars. Refer to Note 7 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.
Interest expense is primarily comprised of coupon interest and debt discount amortization related to our notes.
Our consolidated financial statements are prepared in accordance with accounting principles generally accepted in the United States, or U.S. GAAP. The preparation of these financial statements requires us to make estimates and judgments that affect the reported amounts of assets, liabilities, revenue, cost of revenue, expenses and related disclosure of contingencies. Critical accounting estimates are those estimates that involve a significant level of estimation uncertainty and could have a material impact on our financial condition or results of operations. We have critical accounting estimates in the areas of inventories, income taxes, non-marketable equity securities, and revenue recognition. Refer to Note 1 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a summary of significant accounting policies.
Our contracts may contain more than one performance obligation. Judgement Judgment is required in determining whether each performance obligation within a customer contract is distinct. Except for License and Development Arrangements, NVIDIA products and services function on a standalone basis and do not require a significant amount of integration or interdependency. Therefore, multiple performance obligations contained within a customer contract are considered distinct and are not combined for revenue recognition purposes.
We account for customer programs, which involve rebates and marketing development funds, or MDFs, as a reduction in revenue and accrue for such programs based on the amount we expect to be claimed by customers. Certain customer programs include distributor price incentives or other channel programs for specific products and customer classes which require judgement judgment as to whether the applicable incentives will be attained. Estimates for customer program accruals include a combination of historical attainment and claim rates and may be adjusted based on relevant internal and external factors.
We allocate the total transaction price to each distinct performance obligation in an arrangement with multiple performance obligations on a relative standalone selling price basis. In certain most cases, we can establish standalone selling price based on directly observable prices of products or services sold separately in comparable circumstances to similar customers. If standalone selling price is not directly observable, such as when we do not sell a product or service separately, we determine standalone selling price based on market data and other observable inputs.
Gross profit consists of total net revenue less cost of revenue. Cost of revenue consists primarily of the cost of semiconductors, including wafer fabrication, assembly, testing and packaging, board and device costs, manufacturing support costs, including labor and overhead associated with such purchases, final test yield fallout, inventory and warranty provisions, memory and component costs, tariffs, and shipping costs. Cost of revenue also includes acquisition-related intangible amortization expense, costs for license and development and service arrangements, IP-related costs, and stock-based compensation related to personnel associated with manufacturing operations.
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Our contracts may contain more than one performance obligation. Judgment is required in determining whether each performance obligation within a customer contract is distinct. Except for License and Development Arrangements, NVIDIA products and services function on a standalone basis and do not require a significant amount of integration or interdependency. Therefore, multiple performance obligations contained within a customer contract are considered distinct and are not combined for revenue recognition purposes.
Fiscal Year 2025 2026 Summary
Revenue for fiscal year 2025 2026 was $ 130.5 215.9 billion, up 114 65 % from a year ago.
The net effect on our gross margin from inventory provisions and sales of items previously written down was an unfavorable impact of 2.6% in fiscal year 2026 and 2.3% in fiscal year 2025 and 2.7% in fiscal year 2024 . Our inventory and capacity purchase commitments are based on forecasts of future customer demand and consider our third-party manufacturers' lead times and constraints. Our manufacturing lead times can be and have been long, and in some cases, extended beyond twelve months for some products. We may place non-cancellable inventory orders for certain product components in advance of our historical lead times, pay premiums and provide deposits to secure future supply and capacity. We also adjust to other market factors, such as product offerings and pricing actions by our competitors, new product transitions, and macroeconomic conditions - all of which may impact demand for our products.
A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for fiscal year 2026 compared to fiscal year 2025 is presented below. A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for fiscal year 2025 compared to fiscal year 2024 is presented below. A discussion regarding our financial condition and results of operations for fiscal year 2024 compared to fiscal year 2023 can be found under Item 7 in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 28 26 , 2024 2025 , filed with the SEC on February 21 26 , 2024 2025 , which is available free of charge on the SEC's website at http: / / www.sec.gov and at our investor relations website, http: / / investor.nvidia.com.
Income tax expense was $ 11.1 21.4 billion and $ 4.1 11.1 billion for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 , respectively. Income tax as a percentage of income before income tax was an expense of 13.3 15.1 % and 12.0 13.3 % for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 , respectively.
In fiscal year 2025 2026 , we paid cash dividends to our shareholders of $ 834 974 million. The payment of future cash dividends is subject to our Board of Directors' continuing determination that the declaration of dividends is in the best interests of our shareholders.
The U.S. Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 requires a 1% excise tax on certain share repurchases in excess of shares issued for employee compensation made after December 31, 2022. The excise tax is included in our share repurchase cost and was not material for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 .
Our aggregate debt maturities as of January 26 25 , 2025 2026 , by year payable, are as follows:
During fiscal year 2025 2026 and fiscal year 2024 2025 , we spent $ 3.4 6.1 billion and $ 1.1 3.4 billion on capital expenditures, respectively. We expect to increase capital expenditures in fiscal year 2026 2027 relative to fiscal year 2025 2026 to support the future growth of our business.
Item 7A. Quantitative and Qualitative Disclosures about Market Risk
According to our sensitivity analysis on our investment portfolio, a decrease in the yield curve of 0.5% as of the end of fiscal year 2026 and 2025 would decrease the fair value for these investments by approximately $0.2 billion.
Publicly-held equity securities are subject to market price volatility. A hypothetical 10% decrease in our publicly-held equity securities would decrease the fair value of the publicly-held equity securities balance by $1.8 billion and an insignificant amount as of January 25, 2026 and January 26, 2025, respectively.
Non-marketable equity securities are measured based on cost minus impairment, if any, and are adjusted for observable price changes in orderly transactions for an identical or similar investment in the same issuer. Valuations of our non-marketable equity securities are inherently complex due to the lack of readily available market data and observable transactions, and impact of macroeconomic factors.
For a description of our equity investments, refer to Notes 7 and 8 of the Notes to Condensed Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.
As of the end of fiscal year 2025, we performed a sensitivity analysis on our investment portfolio. According to our analysis, parallel shifts in the yield curve of plus or minus 0.5% would result in a change in fair value for these investments of $238 million.
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If the U.S. dollar strengthened by 10% as of January 25, 2026 and January 26, 2025 and January 28, 2024 , the amount recorded in accumulated Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) related to our foreign exchange contracts before tax effect would have been an adverse impact of $180 million and $136 million and $116 million lower , respectively. Change in value of our foreign exchange contracts recorded in accumulated Accumulated other comprehensive income (loss) would be expected to offset a corresponding change in hedged forecasted foreign currency expenses when recognized.
If an adverse 10% foreign exchange rate change was applied to our balance sheet hedging contracts, it would have resulted in an adverse impact on income before taxes of $ 129 124 million and $ 60 129 million as of January 25, 2026 and January 26, 2025 and January 28, 2024 , respectively. These changes in fair values would be offset in Total other income (expense) , net , by corresponding change in fair values of the foreign currency denominated monetary assets and liabilities, assuming the hedge contracts fully cover the foreign currency denominated monetary assets and liabilities balances.
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As of the end of fiscal year 2025 2026 , we had $8.5 billion of senior Notes outstanding. We carry the Notes at face value less unamortized discount on our Consolidated Balance Sheets. As the Notes bear interest at a fixed rate, we have no financial statement risk associated with changes in interest rates. Refer to Note 11 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for additional information.
We consider our direct exposure to foreign exchange rate fluctuations to be minimal as substantially all of our sales are in United States dollars and foreign currency forward contracts are used to offset movements of foreign currency exchange rates. Gains or losses from foreign currency remeasurement are included in other income or expenses. The impact of foreign currency transaction gain or loss included in determining net income was not significant for fiscal years 2026 and 2025 and 2024 .