“Automotive vertical revenue is expected to reach $5 billion this year.”

$5 billion, approximately 36 billion yuan, represents the latest guidance provided by Nvidia during its earnings report.

This optimistic market outlook follows the launch of its next-generation autonomous driving chip, Thor.

Despite reporting record-breaking financial results that exceeded expectations, the market reacted negatively.

Following the earnings release, Nvidia’s stock plummeted 8.48%, wiping out $271.6 billion (approximately 1.9 trillion yuan) in market capitalization overnight.

Has the end come for Nvidia’s monopoly on profits?

Financial Performance Exceeds Expectations

Consistent with most quarters over the past three years, Nvidia’s fiscal 2025 fourth-quarter earnings report surpassed Wall Street expectations.

Operating revenue for the fourth quarter reached $39.3 billion (approximately 285.3 billion yuan), a year-over-year increase of 78% and a quarter-over-quarter increase of 12%, setting a new historical record.

Although this figure beat the analyst consensus estimate of $38.1 billion (approximately 276.7 billion yuan), the quarter-over-quarter revenue growth rate slowed further, aligning with analysts’ predictions. This deceleration is one reason for Nvidia’s recent stock price volatility.

For the full fiscal year 2025, Nvidia’s total operating revenue amounted to $130.5 billion (approximately 947.5 billion yuan), representing a year-over-year growth of 114%.

Revenue can be broken down into four specific categories based on business type:

Data Center remains Nvidia’s primary source of income, generating $115.2 billion (approximately 836.4 billion yuan) in annual revenue, up 93% year-over-year. This accounts for 88% of total revenue, an increase of 10 percentage points compared to the previous year.

The Automotive and Robotics segment generated $1.7 billion (approximately 12.4 billion yuan) in annual revenue. While this represents only 1.31% of total income—the smallest share among the four categories—it experienced the fastest growth, surging by 103% year-over-year.

Nvidia attributed the strong growth in its automotive and robotics business primarily to the continued expansion of autonomous vehicles.

Full-year revenue from Gaming and Professional Visualization was $11.4 billion and $1.9 billion (with another segment at $1.7 billion), respectively, showing year-over-year growth rates of 9% and 10%.

Nvidia also revealed that the Blackwell architecture has entered mass production. In this first delivery quarter, sales revenue reached $11 billion (approximately 79.9 billion yuan), making it the fastest-growing product in Nvidia’s history.

In terms of profitability, net income for the fourth quarter was $22.09 billion (approximately 160.4 billion yuan), up 80% year-over-year and 14% quarter-over-quarter. Full-year net income reached $72.88 billion (approximately 529.1 billion yuan), a 145% increase year-over-year.

The gross margin for the fourth quarter was 73%, slightly below the expected 73.5%. This represents a year-over-year decline of 3 percentage points and a quarter-over-quarter drop of 1.6 percentage points; however, the full-year gross margin stood at 75%, up 2.3 percentage points year-over-year.

Against the backdrop of overall financial metrics rising and exceeding analyst expectations, the decline in fourth-quarter gross margin stood out prominently.

Nvidia explained that this was due to newer data center products being more complex and expensive. Previously, delays in deploying data centers by major tech companies—caused by overheating issues with Blackwell chips—and increased production costs led Nvidia to offer some concessions.

Furthermore, due to bottlenecks in product progress, Nvidia’s enthusiasm for R&D investment reached unprecedented levels. R&D expenses for the fourth quarter totaled $3.714 billion (approximately 27 billion yuan), a year-over-year increase of 50.7% and a quarter-over-quarter rise of 9.6%.

Full-year R&D expenses for fiscal 2025 reached $12.914 billion (approximately 93.8 billion yuan), up 48.9% year-over-year.

Overall, this remains a positive year-end performance that exceeded expectations.

Nvidia has already provided guidance for the first quarter of fiscal 2026:

Amidst unprecedented enthusiasm for intelligent driving and continuously rising demand for in-vehicle computing power, Nvidia maintains an optimistic outlook on the autonomous driving market and its position within the industry:

• Revenue for Q1 fiscal 2026 is expected to be $43 billion (approximately 312.2 billion yuan), with a variance of ±2%;
• Automotive vertical revenue for full-year fiscal 2026 is projected to grow to $5 billion (approximately 36.2 billion yuan).

This is nearly three times last year’s automotive-related revenue, and this figure includes robotics contributions as well.

However, does reality truly support Nvidia’s ambitions?

What Are Nvidia’s Key Moves This Year?

Nvidia’s confidence hinges on its newly launched autonomous driving chips.

Two models from the Orin series are available: Orin-N and Orin-Y.

The Orin-N targets the low-price market, competing with chips such as Qualcomm’s SA8650 and Infineon’s TDA4VH. However, with a computing power of 84 TOPS, its position seems somewhat awkward compared to the newly released Orin-Y.

Orin-Y focuses on cost-effectiveness, offering 200 TOPS of computing power—slightly lower than the Orin-X’s 254 TOPS. By streamlining certain specifications, costs have been significantly reduced, making it a viable alternative to the Orin-X and appearing more competitive relative to the Orin-N.

Additionally, there is Thor, the next-generation chip that has been long-awaited.

According to Jensen Huang, Thor’s processing capability is 20 times that of its predecessor, Orin.

This generation of chips is based on the latest Blackwell architecture, integrating multiple dedicated computing cores and utilizing TSMC’s 4-nanometer process along with CoWoS-R packaging technology.

Thor can simultaneously process data from various sensors, including cameras, radars, and LiDARs, enabling multi-modal perception and decision-making.

In 2025, Nvidia will primarily promote two Thor variants: Thor-U and Thor-X, with single-chip computing powers of 730 TOPS and 1050 TOPS, respectively. Thor-Z and Thor-S are expected to be released next year.

Thor’s design was finalized around late 2021, and it debuted in September of the following year. However, mass production dates were repeatedly pushed back—from mid-2024 to January of this year—when Jensen Huang finally announced full-scale production at CES.

These repeated delays have directly impacted automakers’ vehicle development schedules, forcing some to alter their plans.

For example, the Xpeng P7+ was originally planned to use Thor chips. Due to Thor’s repeated postponements, it ultimately opted for the previous-generation Orin.

Such occurrences have raised market concerns regarding chip availability, and Nvidia faces the risk of losing core customers.

As the Autonomous Driving “Pie” Grows, Is Nvidia’s Share Shrinking?

China is currently one of the world’s largest automotive markets and undoubtedly one of the countries with the greatest technical potential and growth scale in the autonomous driving industry.

A significant portion of the dividends Nvidia has reaped from the automotive market comes from Chinese automakers.

When Nvidia’s Orin autonomous driving chip first entered China, domestic intelligent driving technology was developing rapidly, and vehicle intelligence had become a new battleground for competition among automakers. There was an urgent need for high-performance chips to meet computing demands.

Coincidentally, the arrival of Orin chips aligned with market needs, becoming one of the top choices for automakers looking to enhance their intelligent driving capabilities. At that time, most advanced solutions utilized dual Orin-X configurations.

However, at the current juncture, the situation is entirely different.

Admittedly, the continued growth of the automotive market, particularly the popularization of intelligent driving in China, will bring considerable opportunities to Nvidia.

The pie has grown larger, but there are more people eating from it; even those who helped bake the pie now want a slice.

Nvidia’s share is being carved up by other chip manufacturers and automakers.

Let’s look at competitors in the same track. Compared to the past, their strength is no longer comparable.

Overseas players include Qualcomm, Mobileye, and Texas Instruments.

Take the strongest competitor, Qualcomm, for instance. Its automotive business growth has been very robust, with the Snapdragon Ride Flex being positioned as a direct rival to the Orin-X.

In October last year, Ride released its “Ultimate” version, which can integrate both cockpit and intelligent driving functions on a single platform.

This version supports over 40 sensors, including multiple exterior cameras with 16-megapixel resolution and 360-degree panoramic infrared cameras for passengers.

It is adaptable to luxury vehicles, flagship mid-to-high-end models, and mass-market cars alike, having already secured public partnerships with Mercedes-Benz and Li Auto.

Domestically, chip manufacturers such as Horizon Robotics and Black Sesame Technologies are also gradually expanding their market share.

Taking Horizon’s Journey 6 series chips as an example, the flagship product, Journey 6P, adopts a quad-core BPU architecture and integrates 18 Cortex-A78AE processors.

A single chip can support full-stack computing tasks including perception, planning and decision-making, and control, with computing power reaching 560 TOPS—more than double that of the Orin-X.

Currently, over 7 million Journey 6 series chips have been mass-produced, with partnerships exceeding 20 automakers and brands, securing design wins for more than 100 mid-to-high-end intelligent driving models.

Beyond chip manufacturers, automakers are beginning to shift toward in-house chip development, including Xpeng and NIO, which were among the first to mass-produce vehicles using Nvidia chips.

In August last year, Xpeng’s self-developed chip successfully completed tape-out (successful trial production), announcing this progress at a press conference and naming it the “Turing Chip.”

Reports indicate that this chip is customized for AI large models and can be applied to various AI hardware such as AI cars and flying cars, with computing power approximately three times that of its peers.

The “Turing” chip is expected to debut in vehicles in May this year, when Xpeng will launch a new model equipped with it.

Subsequent Xpeng models may no longer use Nvidia’s Thor chips.

According to 36Kr, NIO has also not placed orders for Thor.

Its self-developed chip, “Shenji NX9031,” officially completed tape-out in July last year, becoming the world’s first automotive-grade intelligent driving chip manufactured using a 5-nanometer process.

NIO’s future cooperation with Nvidia may stop at Orin.

Despite this, Thor still maintains significant market presence and continues to collaborate with Tesla, BYD, Li Auto, Mercedes-Benz, and Toyota.

However, according to 36Kr Auto, Li Auto appears to be advancing its own chip development under the project codename “Schumacher,” aiming to reduce its reliance on Thor.

Former partners have turned into competitors.

The market Thor now faces is vastly different from that of the “Orin era.”