“Permanent” to the news headlines in 2025! Take stock of Nvidia (NVDA.US)'s 15 key events of the year

The Zhitong Finance App learned that it is hard to imagine any company that will have more influence on Wall Street and the artificial intelligence industry than Nvidia (NVDA.US) in 2025. Investors are closely watching the company's CEO Hwang In-hoon's every move, whether it's his meeting with US President Trump or spending the night eating fried chicken and drinking beer with Samsung and Hyundai executives. Nvidia's revenue soared to $187.1 billion in 2025. Its market value continued to rise, briefly breaking through $5 trillion, then falling back and stabilizing in the $4 trillion range.

Nvidia will have many bright moments and severe shocks in 2025, and the following 15 events are undoubtedly the most important key points.

January 6: CES 2025

Nvidia kicked off the new year with a series of product launches at CES 2025, from new ultra-compact AI chips to more powerful gaming graphics cards. Hwang In-hoon's keynote address covered a variety of topics, including physical AI (i.e. robots), desktop-level AI systems, and a series of AI software updates, which set the tone for the company's development in 2025.

January 27: “DeepSeek Hour”

Despite Nvidia's amazing results in 2025 by almost every measure, the year started off with a shock. In January, DeepSeek released its R-1 model and claimed that the model was trained without using a state of the art processor. The news caused intense turmoil in AI transactions, and Nvidia's market value evaporated by nearly 600 billion US dollars in a single day.

However, after the initial panic, concerns that AI companies no longer need high-performance chips proved to be exaggerated. The reason is that training an AI model and an operating model are two different things, and according to Nvidia, using a more powerful chip operating model can significantly improve overall performance. As more companies shared this view, the market gradually calmed down, but Nvidia's stock price did not return to the level before the “DeepSeek Incident” until June.

March 18: Nvidia unveils Blackwell Ultra chip at GTC

The GTC conference hosted by Nvidia every year used to be just a mid-sized technology conference, but this year was completely different. Wong In-hoon's keynote was packed. The venue was chosen at the SAP Center, home of the San Jose Sharks, while Nvidia almost “took over” a large area of downtown San Jose, including a large food tent area covering 2.3 acres of Plaza Cesar Chavez.

In his speech, Huang Renxun unveiled the Blackwell Ultra chip, the successor to the Blackwell GPU, and the GB300 superchip, which integrates two Blackwell GPUs with a Grace CPU. Hwang In-hoon said that these products were created for the “AI inference era,” adding that models like DeepSeek's R-1 will work better on Nvidia's newest and most powerful chips.

April 2: “Liberation Day”

On April 2, Trump announced the implementation of a series of tariff measures targeting countries and goods, and called this day “Liberation Day.” The move triggered a sharp fall in the stock market, forcing Trump to partially withdraw the relevant measures after a week.

Nvidia has not been spared either. The company's stock price fell from $110 on April 2 to $94.31 on April 4. The stock price returned to pre-“ Liberation Day” levels on April 9, but did not actually break out of the slump until April 25.

April 15: The H20 chip is de facto banned

April was no better for Nvidia. The Trump administration imposes new chip restrictions, requiring Nvidia to obtain permission to export H20 chips to China, which is actually tantamount to banning the sale of this chip to China.

The GPU was specially designed by Nvidia to meet the restrictions set during the Biden administration, but Trump stopped this “special offer from China” chip on national security grounds. As a result, Nvidia charged $4.5 billion in related impairment charges in the first quarter and added an additional $4 billion in the second quarter.

July 9: Nvidia's market capitalization surpasses $4 trillion

Despite the DeepSeek shock and the H20 ban on sales to China, Nvidia's stock price continued to strengthen. In July, the company became the first company with a market capitalization exceeding $4 trillion. Notably, Nvidia surpassed $1 trillion in market capitalization in 2023 and added $3 trillion in just three years, thanks to its dominant position in the AI chip market.

July 14: Nvidia can once again sell the H20 to China

In July, the repeated tug-of-war relationship between the US and China took another turn. Nvidia announced that the Trump administration has promised the company that it will allow it to sell H20 chips to China. Hwang In-hoon successfully persuaded Trump that if the US completely cut off technology sales to China, it might fall behind in the competition. In the end, Trump agreed with Nvidia to resume H20 sales to China.

August 11: Nvidia is required to pay 15% of sales in China

Although the White House promised approval for Nvidia to sell chips to China, it was later announced that a 15% share of these sales would be taken. This rule also applies to Nvidia's competitor AMD (AMD.US). Despite revenue cuts, Wall Street investors aren't overly worried — compared to zero sales to China before, it's clearly better to get 85% of revenue now.

September 22: Nvidia announces it will invest $100 billion in OpenAI

In September, Nvidia announced that it would invest more than $100 billion in ChatGPT developer OpenAI. The partnership will allow OpenAI to build at least 10 gigawatts of data center capacity to train and run GPT models.

The deal raised concerns among some analysts, who warned that such “circular investments” — that is, Nvidia invests in customer OpenAI, and the latter uses the funds to buy Nvidia chips — could artificially drive up AI spending. Nvidia's previous similar deal with CoreWeave (CRWV.US) has also been criticized, and these arrangements have intensified discussions about the AI bubble.

October 17: First Blackwell chip made in the US

Like the previous Biden administration, the Trump administration also sees the return of chip manufacturing as a national priority. Although Nvidia does not manufacture its own chips (it is outsourced to TSMC), in October, the company celebrated the completion of the first Blackwell chip made in the US.

October 29: Nvidia's market capitalization hits $5 trillion

At the end of October, Nvidia's market capitalization surpassed 5 trillion US dollars, and only a few months have passed since crossing 4 trillion US dollars. At a time when market sentiment is rising, Nvidia announced a number of new partnerships with companies such as Uber (Uber.us) at its first GTC conference in Washington, D.C. The market once expected an agreement between China and the US to allow Nvidia to sell chips to China, but in the end, this did not happen.

October 30: Scrolling the screen with photos of Samsung and Hyundai executives eating fried chicken

Hwang In-hoon became a superstar in 2025. In October, reporters and onlookers poured into a Korean fried chicken restaurant just to see him having dinner with Samsung and Hyundai executives. The picture of the three in the same frame then went viral on the internet.

November 19: Nvidia gets permission to export chips to the Middle East

In November, Nvidia was approved to export computing power equivalent to more than 60,000 Blackwell chips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, continuing to expand opportunities to sell processors to more countries. In 2025, Nvidia continues to promote the “sovereign AI” concept, saying that it allows countries to establish autonomous AI data centers without depending on other countries.

November 25: Nvidia's “Google Tweet”

Nvidia faces potential threats from customers, including Microsoft (MSFT.US) and Amazon (AMZN.US), which are developing their own AI chips. In November, there were reports that Google might supply Meta (META.US) with its own TPU chips for use in data centers. This news once worried the market.

Nvidia then posted a screen-flashing tweet congratulating Google's chip on its performance, pointing out that its GPU is one generation ahead, and stressing that Nvidia's chip is the only product that can run all AI models.

December 9: Nvidia H200 approved for sale in China

After a year of repeated tug-of-war, Trump posted a post on social platforms stating approval for Nvidia to sell H200 chips to China. The H200 is two generations behind current Blackwell Ultra processors. However, there are still variables in this arrangement. Nvidia has become a “bargaining chip” in the Sino-US negotiations. Just like Apple before, there is still a risk that its chips will be banned again in the future.