It is hard to imagine any company having a greater impact on Wall Street and the artificial intelligence industry in 2025 than NVIDIA. In 2025, NVIDIA will experience both significant highlights and considerable volatility.
It is hard to imagine any company having a greater impact on Wall Street and the AI industry by 2025 than $NVIDIA (NVDA.US)$ . Investors closely monitor every move made by its CEO, Jensen Huang, whether it’s his meetings with U.S. President Trump or evenings spent eating fried chicken and drinking beer with executives from Samsung and Hyundai. NVIDIA’s revenue surged in 2025, reaching $187.1 billion, while its market capitalization continued to climb, briefly surpassing $5 trillion before settling back into the $4 trillion range.
In 2025, NVIDIA experienced numerous highlights as well as significant fluctuations, with the following 15 events undoubtedly marking the most critical milestones.
January 6: CES 2025
NVIDIA kicked off the new year at CES 2025 with a series of product launches, ranging from a brand-new ultra-compact AI chip to more powerful gaming graphics cards. Jensen Huang’s keynote address covered multiple topics, including physical AI (i.e., robotics), desktop-level AI systems, and a series of AI software updates, setting the tone for the company’s development in 2025.
January 27: 'The DeepSeek Moment'
Despite NVIDIA’s impressive performance by almost every metric in 2025, the year began with a shocking event. In January, DeepSeek released its R-1 model, claiming that the model was trained without using cutting-edge processors. This announcement caused severe turbulence in AI-related trading, wiping out nearly $600 billion of NVIDIA’s market value in a single day.
However, after the initial panic subsided, concerns that AI companies no longer needed high-performance chips proved somewhat exaggerated. The reason is that training an AI model and running one are two different things, and according to NVIDIA, using more powerful chips to run models can significantly enhance overall performance. As more companies embraced this perspective, the market gradually stabilized, but NVIDIA’s stock price did not return to pre-'DeepSeek incident' levels until June.
March 18: NVIDIA Releases Blackwell Ultra Chip at GTC Conference
NVIDIA’s annual GTC conference used to be a mid-sized tech event, but this year was entirely different. Jensen Huang’s keynote speech was packed, held at the SAP Center, home of the San Jose Sharks, while NVIDIA effectively “took over” large parts of downtown San Jose, including a massive food tent area covering 2.3 acres at Cesar Chavez Plaza.
During the presentation, Jensen Huang unveiled the Blackwell Ultra chip—the successor to the Blackwell GPU—and the GB300 superchip, which integrates two Blackwell GPUs with one Grace CPU. Huang stated that these products were designed for the “AI inference era,” adding that models like DeepSeek’s R-1 would perform better on NVIDIA’s latest and most powerful chips.
April 2: "Liberation Day"
On April 2, Trump announced a series of tariff measures targeting specific countries and goods, calling it “Liberation Day.” The move triggered a stock market crash, forcing Trump to partially retract some of the measures a week later.
NVIDIA was not spared either. Its stock price fell from $110 on April 2 to $94.31 on April 4. By April 9, the price had returned to pre-“Liberation Day” levels, but it wasn’t until April 25 that the stock truly recovered from the downturn.
April 15: H20 Chip Effectively Banned
April did not improve for NVIDIA. The Trump administration implemented new chip restrictions, requiring NVIDIA to obtain a license to export the H20 chip to China, effectively banning its sales to the country.
This GPU was specifically designed by NVIDIA to comply with restrictions set during the Biden administration. However, Trump halted this “China-specific” chip on national security grounds. As a result, NVIDIA recorded a $4.5 billion impairment charge in the first quarter and an additional $4 billion in the second quarter.
July 9: NVIDIA’s Market Cap Surpasses $4 Trillion
Despite facing setbacks from the DeepSeek incident and the ban on H20 sales to China, NVIDIA's stock price continued to rise. In July, the company became the first to achieve a market capitalization exceeding $4 trillion. Notably, NVIDIA surpassed the $1 trillion market cap mark in 2023, adding $3 trillion in just three years due to its dominant position in the AI chip market.
July 14: NVIDIA Can Resume Selling H20 to China
In July, the back-and-forth tensions between the U.S. and China saw another turning point. NVIDIA announced that the Trump administration had assured the company it would allow the sale of the H20 chip to China. Jensen Huang successfully persuaded Trump, arguing that completely cutting off technology sales to China could cause the U.S. to fall behind in competition. Ultimately, Trump agreed to let NVIDIA resume H20 sales to China.
August 11: NVIDIA required to remit 15% of its sales revenue in China
Despite White House assurances that NVIDIA’s sales of chips to China would be approved, it was later announced that 15% of these sales would be subject to a revenue share. This regulation also applies to NVIDIA’s competitor $Advanced Micro Devices (AMD.US)$ . Although revenue will be reduced, Wall Street investors are not overly concerned—receiving 85% of sales in China is evidently better than receiving zero as before.
September 22: NVIDIA announces a $100 billion investment in OpenAI
In September, NVIDIA announced an investment of over $100 billion in OpenAI, the developer of ChatGPT. This partnership will enable OpenAI to build at least 10 gigawatts of data center capacity for training and running GPT models.
This deal has sparked concerns among some analysts, who warn that such 'circular investments'—where NVIDIA invests in its customer OpenAI, which then uses the funds to purchase NVIDIA chips—could artificially inflate AI spending. NVIDIA’s similar transactions with $CoreWeave (CRWV.US)$ have also faced criticism, with these arrangements fueling discussions about an AI bubble.
October 17: The first U.S.-made Blackwell chip
Similar to the Biden administration, the Trump administration also prioritized bringing chip manufacturing back to the United States. Although NVIDIA does not manufacture chips itself (outsourcing production to Taiwan Semiconductor), the company celebrated the completion of its first Blackwell chip made in the U.S. in October.
October 29: NVIDIA’s market capitalization reaches $5 trillion
At the end of October, NVIDIA’s market capitalization surpassed $5 trillion, just months after crossing the $4 trillion mark. Amidst high market sentiment, NVIDIA announced several new partnerships, including with $Uber Technologies (UBER.US)$ , at its first GTC conference held in Washington, D.C. There were initial hopes for a U.S.-China agreement that would allow NVIDIA to sell chips to China, but those hopes ultimately went unfulfilled.
October 30: Photo of executives from Samsung and Hyundai eating fried chicken goes viral
Jensen Huang became a superstar in 2025. In October, journalists and onlookers swarmed into a Korean fried chicken restaurant just to catch a glimpse of him dining with executives from Samsung and Hyundai Motor. A photo of the trio quickly went viral online.
November 19: NVIDIA Approved for Chip Exports to the Middle East
In November, NVIDIA was granted approval to export computing power equivalent to over 60,000 Blackwell chips to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, continuing its efforts to expand processor sales to more countries. Throughout 2025, NVIDIA actively promoted the concept of 'sovereign AI,' arguing that it enables nations to build autonomous AI data centers without relying on other countries.
November 25: NVIDIA’s 'Google Tweet'
NVIDIA faces potential threats from customers, including $Microsoft (MSFT.US)$ and $Amazon (AMZN.US)$ , who are developing their own AI chips. In November, reports surfaced that Google might provide funding to $Meta Platforms (META.US)$ The news that it would provide its own TPU chips for data centers once caused market concerns.
NVIDIA subsequently posted a viral tweet congratulating Google on the performance of its chips while noting that its own GPUs were a generation ahead. The company also emphasized that NVIDIA's chips are the only products capable of running all AI models.
December 9: Approval for NVIDIA H200 Sales to China
After a year of back-and-forth negotiations, Trump announced on social media that he had approved NVIDIA’s sale of the H200 chip to China. The H200 is two generations behind the current Blackwell Ultra processor. However, the arrangement remains uncertain. NVIDIA has become a 'bargaining chip' in US-China negotiations, much like Apple before it, and its chips still face the risk of being banned again in the future.
Editor/Doris