It’s difficult to think of any single company that had a bigger impact on Wall Street and the AI trade in 2025 than Nvidia (NVDA).
Investors scrutinized CEO Jensen Huang’s every move, whether that was his meetings with President Trump or a night out with the heads of Samsung and Hyundai for fried chicken and beer.
Nvidia’s revenue soared in 2025, bringing in $187.1 billion, and its market capitalization continued to climb, briefly eclipsing the $5 trillion mark before settling back in the $4 trillion range.
There were plenty of major highs and deep lows throughout the year, but these 15 were among the biggest moments of Nvidia’s 2025.
Jan. 6: CES 2025
Nvidia rang in the new year with a series of product announcements ranging from a new pint-sized AI chip to more powerful gaming cards at CES 2025. Huang’s keynote touched on an array of topics, including physical AI, otherwise known as robots; desktop-based AI systems; and a litany of AI software updates that set the stage for the company’s 2025.
Jan. 27: The DeepSeek moment
Nvidia had an incredible year by seemingly every measure, but it started out with a shock. In January, DeepSeek released its R-1 model, which the company claimed it trained using less than state-of-the-art processors. That sent the AI trade into a meltdown, with the company shedding nearly $600 billion from its market cap in a single day.
The smartphone apps DeepSeek page is seen on a smartphone screen in Beijing, Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Despite the initial blowup, fears that AI companies would no longer need high-powered chips seem to have been overblown. That’s because training AI models and running them are two different operations, and according to Nvidia, running models with more powerful chips improves overall performance.
Markets eventually settled down as more companies agreed with the assumption, but Nvidia’s stock price didn’t return to pre-DeepSeek levels until June.
March 18: Nvidia reveals Blackwell Ultra chips at GTC
Nvidia’s annual GTC event, held in San Jose, used to be a moderately sized tech conference. But this year’s GTC was far different. Huang’s keynote filled the SAP Center, home of the San Jose Sharks hockey team, and Nvidia took over a large swath of downtown San Jose, which included an enormous collection of food tents and stalls that covered the 2.3-acre Plaza de César Chávez.
CEO Jensen Huang talks during the keynote address of Nvidia GTC Tuesday, March 18, 2025, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Nic Coury)
During his speech, Huang debuted Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra chip, the successor to its Blackwell GPU, and the GB300 superchip, which combined two Blackwell GPUs and one of Nvidia’s Grace CPUs.
The CEO said the offerings were built for the age of “AI reasoning” and said models like DeepSeek’s R-1 would run far better on Nvidia’s latest and greatest.
April 2: 'Liberation Day'
Trump’s decision to implement a series of tariffs on countries and goods on April 2, which he called “Liberation Day,” sent the stock market into such a nosedive that the president had no choice but to walk some of them back just a week later.
President Donald Trump comments after stepping off Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House, Wednesday, Dec. 17, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein)
Nvidia wasn’t immune to the drop. The company saw its stock price decline from $110 on April 2 to $94.31 on April 4. Shares returned to pre-"Liberation Day" numbers by April 9, but continued to waffle until breaking out of their slump on April 25.
April 15: H20 effectively banned
Nvidia’s April didn’t get much better when the Trump administration implemented new chip restrictions that called for Nvidia to receive a license to ship the H20 chip to China, effectively banning sales of the processor to the country.
Nvidia designed the GPU to meet restrictions set up during President Joe Biden’s administration. Trump, however, blocked the China-specific chip on security grounds. The company ended up writing down $4.5 billion in charges related to the H20 in Q1 and took an additional $4 billion in Q2.
July 9: Nvidia hits $4 trillion
Despite taking a hit from the DeepSeek meltdown and Trump’s China ban, Nvidia stock continued to perform, and in July the company became the first to see its market capitalization pass the $4 trillion mark.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang speaks on how AI infrastructure and AI factories that generate intelligence at scale are powering a new industrial revolution, at Washington Convention Center, Tuesday, Oct. 28, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
Nvidia topped $1 trillion in 2023 and took just three years to add another $3 trillion, thanks to its leadership position in the AI chip market.
July 14: Nvidia can sell H20 in China again
In July, the on-again-off-again relationship between Washington and China was back on, with Nvidia announcing that the Trump administration had assured the company that it would allow sales of H20 chips to China.
Huang successfully made the case that America would benefit from selling its technologies to China and risked falling behind if it completely cut itself off from the market, convincing Trump to allow Nvidia to sell to the country again.
Aug. 11: Nvidia to pay 15% cut on China sales
Although the White House assured Nvidia it would approve the sale of its chips to China, the administration later announced that it would take a 15% cut of the sales. The same rule applied to Nvidia rival AMD (AMD).
Despite the potential revenue haircut, investors on Wall Street weren’t too bothered by the announcement, figuring that 85% of the revenue from sales to the country was better than the 0% Nvidia was bringing in before.
Sept. 22: Nvidia says it will invest $100 billion in OpenAI
In September, Nvidia announced it would invest upward of $100 billion in ChatGPT developer OpenAI. The partnership would let OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) build out 10 gigawatts or more of data center capacity, allowing it to train and run its GPT models.
SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA - JUNE 02: Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 at Moscone Center on June 02, 2025 in San Francisco, California. Snowflake Summit 2025 runs through June 5th. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
Nvidia’s deals have raised eyebrows among analysts who warn that such circular investments, where a company (Nvidia) invests in a customer (OpenAI) and uses that cash to purchase chips from the investor (Nvidia), artificially boost AI spending.
Nvidia has faced criticism for a similar deal with CoreWeave (CRWV). Nvidia invested in the company, which then turned around and bought Nvidia chips. Such deals have driven at least part of the discussion around an AI bubble.
Oct. 17: Nvidia’s first Blackwell chip built in US
The Trump administration, like the Biden administration before it, has made reshoring chip manufacturing a national imperative. And while Nvidia doesn’t build its own chips — it outsources that to TSMC — it did celebrate that company’s completion of the first Blackwell chip built in the US in October.
Oct. 29: Nvidia hits $5 trillion
Nvidia’s market capitalization hit $5 trillion in late October, just a few months after crossing the $4 trillion mark.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang makes a keynote speech during the special session at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, Friday, Oct. 31, 2025. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
The exuberance came as the company announced a number of new deals with companies like Uber at its first GTC event in Washington, D.C. It also followed word that Huang would meet with Trump in South Korea ahead of the president’s meeting with Xi Jinping to discuss a trade deal.
The hope was that Trump and Xi would reach an agreement to allow Nvidia to sell its chips in the country, but a deal never materialized.
Oct. 30: Viral fried chicken photo with leaders of Samsung and Hyundai
Huang’s star exploded throughout 2025, so much so that in October, reporters and onlookers swarmed a South Korean fried chicken restaurant to catch a glimpse of him dining with the heads of Samsung and Hyundai. An image of the trio subsequently went viral.
Nov. 19: Nvidia to ship chips to the Middle East
Nvidia received authorization to ship the equivalent of more than 60,000 Blackwell chips to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in November as the company continued to vie for the opportunity to sell its processors to a wider array of countries.
Elon Musk speaks with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, as they attend the Saudi Investment Forum at the Kennedy Center, Wednesday, Nov. 19, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
The company has pushed the concept of sovereign AI throughout 2025, saying that it allows countries around the world to get access to their own AI data centers without having to rely on other nations.
But China hawks said the move could give the US adversary access to Nvidia chips, due to that country’s close relationship with the UAE.
Nov. 25: Nvidia’s Google tweet
Nvidia has faced threats from its own customers, including Microsoft (MSFT) and Amazon (AMZN), building their own chips to power their AI platforms, but in November, a report that Google could provide Meta (META) with its own tensor processing units (TPUs) for the social media giant’s data centers seemed to spook Nvidia.
The company sent out a viral tweet in response to the story, congratulating Google on its chips’ performance, but pointed out that its own GPUs were a generation ahead of Google’s and noted that it’s the only chip that can run all AI models.
Dec. 9.: Nvidia H200 approved for China
After a year of will he, won’t he, Trump wrote in a post on the Truth Social platform that he was greenlighting the sale of Nvidia’s H200 chips to China. The H200 is two generations behind Nvidia’s current Blackwell Ultra processors.
Trump said that Xi responded positively to the deal, which, if fully approved by the countries, could provide a boost to Nvidia’s bottom line.
Still, there’s no guarantee that the arrangement won’t fall apart. Nvidia has become a negotiating chip for the two countries, just as Apple was before, and could see its chips banned again.
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