NVIDIA Corporation – April 27, 2023

In an era where artificial intelligence and high-performance computing are revolutionizing industries, Nvidia has emerged as a pioneering player in providing the essential hardware and software solutions to power these transformative technologies.

Expanding significantly from its original focus on PC graphics, Nvidia now specializes in designing and manufacturing graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming and professional markets, as well as system-on-a-chip units (SoCs) for the automotive and mobile computing industries. The company’s GPUs and networking technology power many of the fastest supercomputers across the world. In addition, the advanced design of its hardware and its associated software, which can perceive and understand the world, have made them well suited for deep learning and machine learning that is powering the next era of AI.

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, artificial intelligence, data science, autonomous vehicles, robotics, the metaverse, and 3D internet applications. Consequently, its products and services now cater to a diverse array of customers, ranging from gaming enthusiasts and creative professionals to research institutions and the world’s biggest companies.

With a presence that spans across the globe, and that is catering to numerous sectors, Nvidia has been rapidly expanding and growing in revenue in recent years, as industries beyond gaming are also driving increased demand for advanced computing solutions. Now sitting within the top 10 largest companies on the planet, Nvidia is continuing to broaden its product offerings, target new markets, and form strategic partnerships to stay ahead of the curve in AI and other high-performance technologies.

Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem, Nvidia began with a vision to bring 3D graphics to the gaming and multimedia markets. The company launched its first product, the NV1 multimedia card, in 1995, marking the start of its evolution into a leading force in the graphics industry.

The release of the GeForce 256 in 1999, dubbed the “world’s first GPU”, propelled Nvidia into the spotlight. The GeForce series has since become one of the company’s flagship product lines, with numerous iterations and improvements over the years. The success of the GeForce series cemented Nvidia’s position as a dominant player in the GPU market.

Nvidia continued to grow, and by the late 2000s, it began to explore new markets, such as high-performance computing and artificial intelligence. In 2007, the company introduced CUDA, a parallel computing platform that allows developers to harness the power of GPUs for general-purpose computing tasks, including AI and scientific simulations. This move marked a significant shift in Nvidia’s focus, from solely graphics processing to a wider range of computing applications.

By 2010, the company released its first AI-focused products including the Tesla GPU accelerators and the DGX line of AI supercomputers, which positioned Nvidia as a key player in the burgeoning AI market. Throughout the 2010s, Nvidia expanded its product range further by developing solutions for autonomous vehicles, robotics, and edge computing. The company also made strategic acquisitions, such as Mellanox Technologies and Arm Limited, to strengthen its position in the data center and semiconductor markets.

In recent years, Nvidia has continued to invest in cutting-edge technologies, including ray tracing for realistic graphics, AI-driven features like Deep Learning Super Sampling (DLSS) for improved gaming performance, and data center solutions for high-performance computing.

Since its inception, co-founder Jensen Huang has served as Nvidia’s president, chief executive officer, and a member of the board of directors. Under his leadership, Nvidia has transformed from a graphics-focused company to a leader in high-performance computing, AI, and autonomous technologies. Harvard Business Review has named him one of the top 10 best-performing CEOs in the world, while Fortune has named him Businessperson of the Year. He is also the recipient of numerous industry awards, including the Semiconductor Industry Association’s highest honor, the Robert N. Noyce Award. Prior to founding Nvidia, Huang worked at LSI Logic and Advanced Micro Devices.

Fellow co-founder, Chris Malachowsky, also continues to serve as a member of the executive staff. Malachowsky has been instrumental in managing, defining, and driving the company’s core technologies, having led numerous functions, including IT, operations, and all facets of the company’s product engineering. Prior to Nvidia, Malachowsky held engineering and technical leadership positions at HP and Sun Microsystems. He is also a recognized authority on integrated-circuit design and methodology and has authored close to 40 patents.

Nvidia’s products serve a diverse customer base, ranging from individual consumers seeking an enhanced gaming experience and seamless content creation to large organizations leveraging the technology for high-performance computing and AI tasks. These platforms facilitate uses in everything from autonomous vehicle development to robotics and IoT applications.

At the core of the company’s product line-up are its GPUs, designed for various segments and applications. The GeForce series is primarily targeted at gamers and creative professionals, offering high-performance graphics processing for immersive gaming experiences and harmonious content production. These GPUs incorporate advanced technologies like ray tracing and AI-driven features such as DLSS, which enhance visual quality and performance.

For researchers, scientists, and AI developers, Nvidia offers powerful GPU accelerators like the Tesla and A100 series. These GPUs are designed for high-performance computing, deep learning, and AI applications. Leveraging the company’s CUDA parallel computing platform, these GPUs enable users to solve complex computational problems and develop AI models more efficiently. In addition to individual GPUs, Nvidia offers AI supercomputers like the DGX series, which provide turnkey solutions for AI research and development.

Nvidia GPUs allow gamers to enjoy immersive, increasingly cinematic virtual worlds, while researchers and developers use them to accelerate a wide range of critical applications, from simulating molecular dynamics to climate forecasting. The world’s leading cloud service providers (CSPs) and consumer internet companies leverage Nvidia platforms to enable, accelerate, or enrich the services they deliver to billions of end-users, including search and recommendations, social networking, online shopping, live video, translation, and navigation, among other many other things.

A rapidly growing number of enterprises and start-ups across a broad range of industries use Nvidia hardware and software to bring automation to the products and services they build. The transportation industry is turning to the company’s platforms for autonomous driving; the healthcare industry is leveraging them for enhanced medical imaging and acceleration of drug discovery; and the financial services industry is using them for fraud detection. While professional designers use Nvidia GPUs and software in everything from creating visual effects in movies to designing buildings and products ranging from cell phones to commercial aircraft.

To complement its hardware offerings, Nvidia provides a comprehensive software ecosystem, including the CUDA development platform, cuDNN library for deep learning, and various software development kits for AI, computer vision, and robotics. While the ease of integration with other systems, such as cloud platforms, data analytics tools, and popular software applications, has further driven the value of its offerings.

Nvidia is strategically positioned to capitalize on the growing demand for advanced computing solutions in the enormous markets for data centers, gaming, professional visualization, and automotive industries, in which its computing platforms can provide tremendous acceleration for applications. To strengthen its market position in these industries and continue its growth trajectory, Nvidia is focusing on several key areas.

The company is continuing to advance its accelerated computing platform to solve complex problems in significantly less time and with lower power consumption than alternative computational approaches. Ultimately delivering order-of-magnitude performance advantages across target markets. While the computing requirements of these end markets are diverse, Nvidia addresses them with a unified underlying architecture that allows them to make leveraged investments in research and development, which can then support several multi-billion-dollar end markets with shared underlying technology that is complemented with a variety of software stacks.

Nvidia is also extending its leadership in AI, where it provides a complete, end-to-end accelerated computing platform for deep learning and machine learning. GPUs are uniquely suited to AI, and the company has said it will continue to add AI-specific features to its architecture. Nvidia platforms are utilized by virtually every major server maker and CSP, while close to four million developers worldwide use CUDA and other software tools to fuel a large and expanding ecosystem in a virtuous cycle. Nvidia “evangelizes” AI through partnerships with hundreds of universities and over 14,000 start-ups through its Inception program, while the company’s Deep Learning Institute provides instruction on the latest techniques on how to design, train, and deploy neural networks.

Furthermore, Nvidia is partnering with leading CSPs to offer AI-as-a-service that provides enterprise access to Nvidia’s world-leading AI platform. As a result, customers will be able to engage an AI supercomputer, acceleration libraries software, or pre-trained generative AI models as a cloud service.

The company also believes that computer graphics are fundamental to the continued expansion and evolution of computing. Consequently, it continues to apply research and development resources to enhance the user experience for consumer entertainment and professional visualization applications, creating new virtual worlds and simulation capabilities. Likewise, the advent of autonomous vehicles will soon revolutionize the transportation industry. And with AI as the key technology enabler of this opportunity, Nvidia is providing comprehensive and safe AI-based hardware and software solutions to market through partnerships with automotive original equipment manufacturers.

In the last quarter alone, new partnerships with global leaders including Deutsche Bank, Dell, Microsoft, Lockheed Martin, Mercedes Benz, and Foxconn continue to showcase Nvidia’s traction across all four of its business segments.

While Nvidia’s revenue for FY23 came in flat at $27 billion, the result followed two years of explosive growth at 53% and 62% year-over-year as it emerged from a covid pandemic dip in 2020. Despite gaming revenue being impacted by 27% due to a cyclical correction after huge covid demand, coupled with a hit from the slumping crypto market weighing on the need for GPUs, stellar growth of over 40% in Data Centre revenue, took the company’s largest business to a record $15 billion, and has kept the company performing strongly.

Although gross margins dipped to 56.9% due to $2.2 billion of inventory provisions in FY23, management is forecasting for margins to return to approximately 65% in the upcoming quarters. While operating expenses are also expected to remain at current levels in the quarters ahead.

As momentum gathers from new technologies and computing demand across industries accelerates, analysts are projecting Nvidia revenue to grow more than 11% in FY24, topping $30 billion, before further surging over 20% in subsequent years. Strong improvements of more than 30% year-over-year are also expected in earnings per share growth, hitting $4.53 in FY24, and advancing to almost $8 per share by FY26.

The market for Nvidia’s products is intensely competitive and is characterized by rapid technological change and evolving industry standards, which are serviced by an extensive list of well-established global companies. Suppliers of hardware and software for GPUs, custom chips, and other accelerated computing solutions include the likes of Advanced Micro Devices, Intel, Broadcom, Qualcomm, and Samsung, among many others. In addition, large CSPs that are designing chips and software that incorporate accelerated or AI computing functionality as part of their platforms, include Alibaba, Alphabet, and Amazon.

While Nvidia’s market leadership in GPUs, a strong focus on innovation, and expanding product portfolio, position the company favorably in this challenging environment, it is also important to note that its success is currently priced at a significant premium, with its forward price-to-earnings ratio at close to 60, eclipsing many of its peers.

Thanks to a diversified product portfolio, strong demand for AI and deep learning technologies, coupled with continuous innovation, Nvidia has established itself as a dominant force in the technology industry. As the company continues to invest in cutting-edge solutions and strategic partnerships, it appears well-positioned to further capitalize on the ever-increasing demands for advanced computing technologies.