NVIDIA Corporation: 10-K Risk Factor Changes

We are subject to laws and regulations domestically and worldwide, affecting our operations in areas including, but not limited to, IP ownership and infringement; taxes; import and export requirements and tariffs; anti-corruption, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; business acquisitions; foreign exchange controls and cash repatriation restrictions; foreign ownership and investment; data privacy requirements; competition and antitrust; advertising; employment; product regulations; cybersecurity; environmental, health, and safety requirements; the responsible use of AI; sustainability; cryptocurrency; and consumer laws. Compliance with such requirements can be onerous and expensive, could impact our competitive position, and may negatively impact our business operations and ability to manufacture and ship our products. There can be no assurance that our employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or agents will not violate applicable laws or the policies, controls, and procedures that we have designed to help ensure compliance with such laws, and violations could result in fines, criminal sanctions against us, our officers, or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business, and damage to our reputation. Changes to the laws, rules and regulations to which we are subject, or changes to their interpretation and enforcement, could lead to materially greater compliance and other costs, and/or further restrictions on our ability to manufacture and supply our products and operate our business. For example, 24 24 24 Table of Contents Table of Contents we may face increased compliance costs as a result of changes or increases in antitrust legislation, regulation, administrative rule making, increased focus from regulators on cybersecurity vulnerabilities and risks. Our position in markets relating to AI has led to increased interest in our business from regulators worldwide, including the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Japan, and China. For example, the French Competition Authority collected information from us regarding our business and competition in the graphics card and CSP market as part of an ongoing inquiry into competition in those markets. We have also received, and continue to receive, broad requests for information from competition regulators in the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Korea regarding our sales of GPUs and other NVIDIA products, our efforts to allocate supply, foundation models and our investments, partnerships and other agreements with companies developing foundation models, the markets in which we compete and our competition, our strategies, roadmaps, and efforts to develop, market, and sell hardware, software, and system solutions, and our agreements with customers, suppliers, and partners. We expect to receive additional requests for information in the future. Such requests have been and are likely to be expensive and burdensome and could negatively impact our business and our relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners. Governments and regulators are also considering, and in certain cases, have imposed restrictions on the hardware, software, and systems used to develop frontier foundation models and generative AI. For example, the EU AI Act became effective on August 1, 2024 and will be fully applicable after a two-year transitional period. The EU AI Act may impact our ability to train, deploy, or release AI models in the EU. Several states are considering enacting or have already enacted regulations concerning AI technologies, with new state laws that took effect on January 1, 2026, which may impact our ability to train, deploy, or release AI models, and increase our compliance costs. Restrictions under these and any other regulations, if implemented, could increase the costs and burdens to us and our customers, delay or halt deployment of new systems using our products, and reduce the number of new entrants and customers, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Revisions to laws or regulations or their interpretation and enforcement could also result in increased taxation, trade sanctions, the imposition of or increase to import duties or tariffs, restrictions and controls on imports or exports, or other retaliatory actions, which could have an adverse effect on our business plans or impact the timing of our shipments. Additionally, changes in the public perception of governments in the regions where we operate or plan to operate could negatively impact our business and results of operations. Government actions, including trade protection and national and economic security policies of U.S. and foreign government bodies, such as tariffs, import or export regulations, including deemed export restrictions and restrictions on the activities of U.S. persons, trade and economic sanctions, decrees, quotas or other trade barriers and restrictions could affect our ability to ship products, provide services to our customers and employees, do business without an export license with entities on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Entity List or other USG restricted parties lists (which is expected to change from time to time), and generally fulfill our contractual obligations and have a material adverse effect on our business. If we were ever found to have violated export control laws or sanctions of the U.S. or similar applicable non-U.S. laws, even if the violation occurred without our knowledge, we may be subject to various penalties available under the laws, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. For example, in response to the war in Ukraine, the United States and other jurisdictions imposed economic sanctions and export control measures which blocked the passage of our products, services and support into Russia, Belarus, and certain regions of Ukraine. In fiscal year 2023, we stopped direct sales to Russia and closed business operations in Russia. Concurrently, the war in Ukraine has impacted sales in EMEA and may continue to do so in the future. The increasing focus on the risks and strategic importance of AI technologies has resulted in regulatory restrictions that target products and services capable of enabling or facilitating AI and may in the future result in additional restrictions impacting some or all of our product and service offerings. Concerns regarding third-party use of AI for purposes contrary to local governmental interests, including concerns relating to the misuse of AI applications, models, and solutions, has resulted in and could in the future result in unilateral or multilateral restrictions on products that can be used for training, modifying, tuning, and deploying LLMs and other AI applications. Such restrictions have limited and could in the future limit the ability of downstream customers and users worldwide to acquire, deploy and use systems that include our products, software, and services, and negatively impact our business and financial results. Such restrictions could include additional unilateral or multilateral export controls on certain products or technology, including but not limited to AI technologies. As geopolitical tensions have increased, semiconductors associated with AI, including GPUs and related products, are increasingly the focus of export control restrictions proposed by stakeholders in the U.S. and its allies. The United States has imposed unilateral worldwide controls restricting GPUs and associated products, and it is likely that additional unilateral or multilateral controls will be adopted. Such controls have been and may again be very broad in scope and application, prohibit us from exporting our products to any or all customers in one or more markets, and could negatively impact our manufacturing, testing and warehousing locations and options, or could impose other conditions that limit our ability to serve demand abroad and could negatively and materially impact our business, revenue and financial results. Export controls and other restrictions targeting GPUs and semiconductors associated with AI, which have been imposed and are likely to be more restrictive, would further limit our ability to export our technology, products, or services, creating a competitive disadvantage for us and negatively impacting our business 25 25 25 Table of Contents Table of Contents and financial results. Export controls targeting GPUs and semiconductors associated with AI have subjected and may in the future subject downstream users of our products to restrictions on the use, resale, repair, or transfer of our products, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Controls could negatively impact our cost and/or ability to provide services such as NVIDIA AI cloud services and could impact the cost and/or ability for our CSPs and customers to provide services to their end customers, even outside China. Export controls have and could in the future disrupt our supply chain and distribution channels, negatively impacting our ability to serve demand, including in markets outside China and for our non-data center products. The possibility of additional export controls has negatively impacted and may in the future negatively impact demand for our products, benefiting competitors that offer alternatives less likely to be restricted by further controls. Repeated changes in the export control rules are likely to impose compliance burdens on our business and our customers, negatively and materially impacting our business. Increasing use of economic sanctions and export controls has impacted and may in the future impact demand for our products or services, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Reduced demand due to export controls has and could in the future lead to excess inventory or cause us to incur related supply charges. Additional unilateral or multilateral controls are also likely to include deemed export control limitations that negatively impact the ability of our research and development teams to execute our roadmap or other objectives in a timely manner. Additional export restrictions may not only impact our ability to serve overseas markets, but also provoke responses from foreign governments, including China, that negatively impact our supply chain or our ability to provide our products and services to customers in all markets worldwide, which could also substantially reduce our revenue. Regulators in China have inquired about our sales and efforts to supply the China market and our fulfillment of the commitments we entered at the close of our Mellanox acquisition. On September 15, 2025, China’s antitrust regulators published their preliminary finding that our compliance with applicable U.S. export controls, which required us to offer degraded products to the Chinese market, discriminated unfairly against customers in the China market and therefore violated the terms of China’s approval of our Mellanox acquisition. If regulators conclude that we have failed to fulfill the terms of our Mellanox acquisition or we have violated any applicable law in China, we could be subject to financial penalties, restrictions on our ability to conduct our business, restrictions or other orders regarding our networking business, products, and services, or otherwise impact our operations in China, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. Over the past three years, we have been subject to a series of shifting and expanding export control restrictions, impacting our ability to serve customers outside the United States. In August 2022, the USG announced export restrictions and export licensing requirements targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries. These restrictions impacted exports of certain chips, as well as software, hardware, equipment and technology used to develop, produce and manufacture certain chips to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia, and specifically impact our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits. In July 2023, the USG also informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East. In October 2023, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements for exports to China and Country Groups D:1, D:4, and D:5 (including but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S RTX 4090, GB200 NVL72, and B200. The licensing requirements also apply to the export of products exceeding certain performance thresholds to a party headquartered in, or with an ultimate parent headquartered in, Country Group D5, including China. In April 2025, the USG informed us that it requires a license for export to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and D:5 countries, or to companies headquartered or with an ultimate parent therein, of our H20 integrated circuits and any other circuits achieving the H20’s memory bandwidth, interconnect bandwidth, or combination thereof. As a result of these requirements, we incurred a $4.5 billion charge in the first quarter of fiscal year 2026 associated with H20 for excess inventory and purchase obligations, as the demand for H20 products diminished. In August 2025, the USG granted licenses that would allow us to ship certain H20 products to certain China-based customers. We generated approximately $60 million in H20 revenue under those licenses. USG officials expressed an expectation that the USG will receive 15% or more of the revenue generated from licensed sales of our products, but the USG did not publish a regulation codifying such requirement. In February 2026, the USG granted a license that would allow us to ship small amounts of H200 products to specific China-based customers. To date, we have not generated any revenue under the H200 licensing program, and do not yet know whether any imports will be allowed into China. The license requires that the H200s go through an inspection process in the United States prior to any shipment to the customer. As a result, any H200 shipped under the new licensing program will be subject to a 25% tariff upon importation into the United States. 26 26 26 Table of Contents Table of Contents In the event that we are able to sell licensed products into the China market, we may not be able to pass along all or any of the tariff to our customers, and may be subject to litigation, increased costs, and a harmed competitive position. The export controls applicable to China are complex and address a variety of parameters, including the total processing performance of a chip, the “performance density” of a chip, the interconnect bandwidth of a chip, and the memory bandwidth of a chip. Under the current rules and geopolitical landscape, we are unable to create and deliver a competitive product for China’s data center market that receives approval from both the USG and the Chinese government. As of the end of fiscal year 2026, we were effectively foreclosed from competing in China's data center computing/compute market, and our effective foreclosure from the China market helped our competitors build larger developer and customer ecosystems to challenge us worldwide. Unless we are able to return with a product that meets the approval of both the USG and the Chinese government, our lost opportunity and the benefit to our competitors will have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. In addition to controls targeting D:1, D:4 and D:5 countries, the USG has also imposed worldwide export controls impacting our products, and may impose additional controls in the future. In January 2025, the USG published the AI Diffusion IFR in the Federal Register. The IFR would have imposed a worldwide licensing requirement on our data center products, such as our H200, GB200 and GB300. The AI Diffusion IFR would have divided the world into three tiers, relegating most countries to “Tier 2” status, and would have created a complex and burdensome scheme for licensing approvals. In May 2025, the USG announced that it would rescind the AI Diffusion IFR and implement a replacement rule. The scope, timing, and requirements of the forthcoming rule remain uncertain. The replacement rule may impose new restrictions on our products or operations and/or add license requirements that could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. For example, in October 2025, the Senate passed the “GAIN AI Act” in the NDAA. The GAIN AI Act would restrict the Trump Administration’s ability to adapt the Biden Administration’s export control rules, and could also allow private U.S. persons to review and overturn licensing and foreign policy decisions made by the Trump Administration. Our competitive position has been harmed by export controls, and our competitive position and future results will be further harmed, over the long term, if the restrictions remain in place or are expanded in geographic, customer, or product scope, if customers purchase product from competitors, if customers develop their own internal solution, if we are unable to provide contractual warranty or other extended service obligations, if the USG does not grant licenses in a timely manner or denies licenses to significant customers or if we incur significant transition costs. The licensing process may not be resolved before significant business opportunities evaporate. Even if the USG grants any requested licenses, the licenses have already and may in the future be temporary, impose burdensome conditions regarding the installation, maintenance, and use of such products, or include financial or economic requirements that we or our customers or end users cannot or choose not to fulfill. The licensing requirements have already and may in the future benefit certain of our competitors, as the licensing process will make our pre-sale and post-sale technical support efforts more cumbersome and less certain and encourage customers in China, the Middle East, and other regions to pursue alternatives to our products, including semiconductor suppliers based in China, Europe, and Israel. Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results. In the event of such change, we may be unable to sell our inventory of such products and may be unable to develop replacement products not subject to the licensing requirements. For example, the USG already imposed license conditions that limit the ability of foreign firms to create and offer as a service large-scale GPU clusters, such as imposing license conditions on the use of products to be exported to certain countries, and may impose additional conditions such as requiring chip tracking and throttling mechanisms that could disable or impair GPUs if certain events, including unauthorized system configuration, use, or location, are detected. Such government mandates in chip designs could introduce system vulnerabilities and expose us to significant risk and potential liability, negatively impact demand for our products, and could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. Even if not enacted into binding legislation, draft bills have impacted and may in the future negatively impact our business. For example, following U.S. legislative proposals calling for mandatory features in our chips, China’s government publicly questioned whether our H20 products have built-in vulnerabilities, discouraging customers from purchasing our products. We provided a public response explaining that our GPUs, including H20, do not include such built-in vulnerabilities, and will respond to any follow-up questions we receive. Open-source foundation models are rapidly growing in popularity with developers worldwide. Any regulatory control or other restriction that limits our ability to provide products and services that support third-party applications and models, including applications built on foundation models originating in China such as DeepSeek, Qwen, or KIMMI, could have a material impact on our business, operating results, and financial condition. The USG already imposed export controls restricting certain gaming GPUs, and if the USG expands such controls to restrict additional gaming products, it may disrupt a significant portion of our supply and distribution chain and 27 27 27 Table of Contents Table of Contents negatively impact sales of such products to markets outside China, including the U.S. and Europe. In addition, as the performance of the gaming GPUs increases over time, export controls may have a greater impact on our ability to compete in markets subject to those controls. Export controls may disrupt our supply and distribution chain for a substantial portion of our products, which are warehoused in and distributed from Hong Kong. Export controls restricting our ability to sell data center GPUs may also negatively impact demand for our networking products used in servers containing our GPUs. The USG may also impose export controls on our networking products, such as high-speed network interconnects, to limit the ability of downstream parties to create large clusters for frontier model training. Export controls have and are likely in the future to have a disproportionate impact on NVIDIA and may disadvantage us against certain of our competitors that sell chips that are outside the scope of such control. Export controls have already and may in the future encourage customers outside China and other impacted regions to “design-out” certain U.S. semiconductors from their products to reduce the compliance burden and risk, and to ensure that they are able to serve markets worldwide. Export controls have already encouraged and may in the future encourage overseas governments to request that our customers purchase from our competitors rather than NVIDIA or other U.S. firms, harming our business, market position, and financial results. As a result, export controls have in the past and may in the future negatively impact demand for our products and services not only in China, but also in other markets, such as Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Export controls increase the risk of investing in U.S. advanced semiconductor products, because by the time a new product is ready for market, it may be subject to new unilateral export controls restricting its sale, resulting in excess inventory and purchase obligations as we recently experienced with the H20. At the same time, such controls may increase investment in foreign competitors, which would be less likely to be restricted by U.S. controls. The increasingly complex export controls impose complex and burdensome compliance obligations on our partners, suppliers, and customers. While we seek to strictly comply with all applicable export control regulators, reports of diversion of controlled products, even when unsubstantiated and untrue, may negatively impact our business, relationships with partners and customers, and our reputation. Incorrect allegations that our compliance efforts satisfy the letter but not the “spirit” of the applicable regulations, as well as incorrect allegations that legitimate and appropriate business is using supposed “loopholes” in the export controls may negatively impact our business, relationships with partners and customers, and our reputation. In addition to export controls, the USG may impose restrictions on the import and sale of products that incorporate technologies developed or manufactured in whole or in part in China. For example, the USG adopted “Connected Vehicle” restrictions on the import and sale of certain automotive products in the United States, which if adopted and interpreted broadly, could impact our ability to develop and supply solutions for our automotive customers. The USG is also considering restrictions that would limit our ability to support third-party applications and models built on open-source foundation models originating in China. Such restrictions, if implemented, would favor our foreign competitors and negatively impact our business. Additionally, restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on the duration of gaming activities and access to games may adversely affect our Gaming revenue, and even if we are able to participate in the China data center compute market, increased oversight of digital platform companies may adversely affect our Data Center revenue. The Chinese government has encouraged customers to purchase from our China-based competitors and discouraged customers from purchasing, importing, or using our data center products, including any China-specific product designed to comply with U.S. export controls. As another example, an agency of the Chinese government announced an Action Plan that endorses new standards regarding the compute performance per watt and per memory bandwidth of accelerators used in new and renovated data centers in China. Although we are already effectively foreclosed from the China market by U.S. export controls, if those controls changed to allow us to return to the market, the Chinese government could modify or implement the Action Plan in a way that effectively prevents us from being able to design products to meet the new standard, which may restrict the ability of customers to use some of our data center products and may have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. Further restrictions on our products or the products of our suppliers could negatively impact our business and financial results. Finally, our business depends on our ability to receive consistent and reliable supply from our overseas partners, especially in Taiwan and South Korea. Any new restrictions that negatively impact our ability to receive supply of components, parts, or services from Taiwan and South Korea, would negatively impact our business and financial results.

We are subject to laws and regulations domestically and worldwide, affecting our operations in areas including, but not limited to, IP ownership and infringement; taxes; import and export requirements and tariffs; anti-corruption, including the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act; business acquisitions; foreign exchange controls and cash repatriation restrictions; foreign ownership and investment; data privacy requirements; competition and antitrust; advertising; employment; product regulations; cybersecurity; environmental, health, and safety requirements; the responsible use of AI; sustainability; cryptocurrency; and consumer laws. Compliance with such requirements can be onerous and expensive, could impact our competitive position, and may negatively impact our business operations and ability to manufacture and ship our products. There can be no assurance that our employees, contractors, suppliers, customers or agents will not violate applicable laws or the policies, controls, and procedures that we have designed to help ensure compliance with such laws, and violations could result in fines, criminal sanctions against us, our officers, or our employees, prohibitions on the conduct of our business, and damage to our reputation. Changes to the laws, rules and regulations to which we are subject, or changes to their interpretation and enforcement, could lead to materially greater compliance and other costs, and/or further restrictions on our ability to manufacture and supply our products and operate our business. For example, we may face increased compliance costs as a result of changes or increases in antitrust legislation, regulation, administrative rule making, increased focus from regulators on cybersecurity vulnerabilities and risks. Our position in markets relating to AI has led to increased interest in our business from regulators worldwide, including the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea and China. For example, the French Competition Authority collected information from us regarding our business and competition in the graphics card and cloud service provider market as part of an ongoing inquiry into competition in those markets. We have also received, and continue to receive, broad requests for information from competition regulators in the European Union, the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Korea regarding our sales of GPUs and other NVIDIA products, our efforts to allocate supply, foundation models and our investments, partnerships and other agreements with companies developing foundation models, the markets in which we compete and our competition, our strategies, roadmaps, and efforts to develop, market, and sell hardware, software, and system solutions, and our agreements with customers, suppliers, and partners. We expect to receive additional requests for information in the future. Such requests may be expensive and burdensome and could negatively impact our business and our relationships with customers, suppliers, and partners. Governments and regulators are also considering, and in certain cases, have imposed restrictions on the hardware, software, and systems used to develop frontier foundation models and generative AI. For example, the EU AI Act became effective on August 1, 2024 and will be fully applicable after a two-year transitional period. The EU AI Act may impact our ability to train, deploy, or release AI models in the EU. Several states are considering enacting or have already enacted regulations concerning AI technologies, which may impact our ability to train, deploy, or release AI models, and increase our compliance costs. Restrictions under these and any other regulations, if implemented, could increase the costs and burdens to us and our customers, delay or halt deployment of new systems using our products, and reduce the number of new entrants and customers, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Revisions to laws or regulations or their interpretation and enforcement could also result in increased taxation, trade sanctions, the imposition of or increase to import duties or tariffs, restrictions and controls on imports or exports, or other retaliatory actions, which could have an adverse effect on our business plans or impact the timing of our shipments. Additionally, changes in the public perception of governments in the regions where we operate or plan to operate could negatively impact our business and results of operations. Government actions, including trade protection and national and economic security policies of U.S. and foreign government bodies, such as tariffs, import or export regulations, including deemed export restrictions and restrictions on 25 25 25 Table of Contents Table of Contents the activities of U.S. persons, trade and economic sanctions, decrees, quotas or other trade barriers and restrictions could affect our ability to ship products, provide services to our customers and employees, do business without an export license with entities on the U.S. Department of Commerce’s U.S. Entity List or other USG restricted parties lists (which is expected to change from time to time), and generally fulfill our contractual obligations and have a material adverse effect on our business. If we were ever found to have violated export control laws or sanctions of the U.S. or similar applicable non-U.S. laws, even if the violation occurred without our knowledge, we may be subject to various penalties available under the laws, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. For example, in response to the war in Ukraine, the United States and other jurisdictions imposed economic sanctions and export control measures which blocked the passage of our products, services and support into Russia, Belarus, and certain regions of Ukraine. In fiscal year 2023, we stopped direct sales to Russia and closed business operations in Russia. Concurrently, the war in Ukraine has impacted sales in EMEA and may continue to do so in the future. The increasing focus on the risks and strategic importance of AI technologies has resulted in regulatory restrictions that target products and services capable of enabling or facilitating AI and may in the future result in additional restrictions impacting some or all of our product and service offerings. Concerns regarding third-party use of AI for purposes contrary to local governmental interests, including concerns relating to the misuse of AI applications, models, and solutions, has resulted in and could in the future result in unilateral or multilateral restrictions on products that can be used for training, modifying, tuning, and deploying LLMs and other AI applications. Such restrictions have limited and could in the future limit the ability of downstream customers and users worldwide to acquire, deploy and use systems that include our products, software, and services, and negatively impact our business and financial results. Such restrictions could include additional unilateral or multilateral export controls on certain products or technology, including but not limited to AI technologies. As geopolitical tensions have increased, semiconductors associated with AI, including GPUs and related products, are increasingly the focus of export control restrictions proposed by stakeholders in the U.S. and its allies. The United States has imposed unilateral worldwide controls restricting GPUs and associated products, and it is likely that additional unilateral or multilateral controls will be adopted. Such controls have been and may again be very broad in scope and application, prohibit us from exporting our products to any or all customers in one or more markets, including but not limited to China and over 150 countries designated “Tier 2” by the January 2025 AI Diffusion IFR, and could negatively impact our manufacturing, testing and warehousing locations and options, or could impose other conditions that limit our ability to serve demand abroad and could negatively and materially impact our business, revenue and financial results. Export controls targeting GPUs and semiconductors associated with AI, which have been imposed and are increasingly likely to be further tightened, would further restrict our ability to export our technology, products, or services even though competitors may not be subject to similar restrictions, creating a competitive disadvantage for us and negatively impacting our business and financial results. Export controls targeting GPUs and semiconductors associated with AI have subjected and may in the future subject downstream users of our products to additional restrictions on the use, resale, repair, or transfer of our products, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Controls could negatively impact our cost and/or ability to provide services such as NVIDIA AI cloud services and could impact the cost and/or ability for our CSPs and customers to provide services to their end customers, even outside China. Export controls could disrupt our supply chain and distribution channels, negatively impacting our ability to serve demand, including in markets outside China and for our gaming products. The possibility of additional export controls has negatively impacted and may in the future negatively impact demand for our products, benefiting competitors that offer alternatives less likely to be restricted by further controls. Repeated changes in the export control rules are likely to impose compliance burdens on our business and our customers, negatively and materially impacting our business. Increasing use of economic sanctions and export controls has impacted and may in the future impact demand for our products or services, negatively impacting our business and financial results. Reduced demand due to export controls could also lead to excess inventory or cause us to incur related supply charges. Additional unilateral or multilateral controls are also likely to include deemed export control limitations that negatively impact the ability of our research and development teams to execute our roadmap or other objectives in a timely manner. Additional export restrictions may not only impact our ability to serve overseas markets, but also provoke responses from foreign governments, including China, that negatively impact our supply chain or our ability to provide our products and services to customers in all markets worldwide, which could also substantially reduce our revenue. Regulators in China have inquired about our sales and efforts to supply the China market and our fulfillment of the commitments we entered at the close of our Mellanox acquisition. For example, regulators in China are investigating whether complying with applicable U.S. export controls discriminates unfairly against customers in the China market. If regulators conclude that we have failed to fulfill such commitments or we have violated any applicable law in China, we could be subject to financial penalties, restrictions on our ability to conduct our business, restrictions regarding our networking products and services, or otherwise impact our operations in China, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. 26 26 26 Table of Contents Table of Contents Over the past three years, we have been subject to a series of shifting and expanding export control restrictions, impacting our ability to serve customers outside the United States. During the third quarter of fiscal year 2023, the USG announced export restrictions and export licensing requirements targeting China’s semiconductor and supercomputing industries. These restrictions impact exports of certain chips, as well as software, hardware, equipment and technology used to develop, produce and manufacture certain chips to China (including Hong Kong and Macau) and Russia, and specifically impact our A100 and H100 integrated circuits, DGX or any other systems or boards which incorporate A100 or H100 integrated circuits. The licensing requirements also apply to any future NVIDIA integrated circuit achieving certain peak performance and chip-to-chip I/O performance thresholds, as well as any system or board that includes those circuits. There are also now licensing requirements to export a wide array of products, including networking products, destined for certain end users and for certain end uses in China. During the second quarter of fiscal year 2024, the USG also informed us of an additional licensing requirement for a subset of A100 and H100 products destined to certain customers and other regions, including some countries in the Middle East. In October 2023, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements that became effective in our fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024 for exports to China and Country Groups D1, D4, and D5 (including but not limited to, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Vietnam, but excluding Israel) of our products exceeding certain performance thresholds, including, but not limited to, the A100, A800, H100, H800, L4, L40, L40S and RTX 4090. The licensing requirements also apply to the export of products exceeding certain performance thresholds to a party headquartered in, or with an ultimate parent headquartered in, Country Group D5, including China. On October 23, 2023, the USG informed us that the licensing requirements were effective immediately for shipments of our A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S products (removing the grace period granted by the official rule). Blackwell systems, such as GB200 NVL 72 and NVL 36 as well as B200 are also subject to these requirements and therefore require a license for any shipment to certain entities and to China and Country Groups D1, D4, and D5, excluding Israel. To date, we have not received licenses to ship these restricted products to China. On January 15, 2025, the USG published the “AI Diffusion” IFR in the Federal Register. After a 120-day delayed compliance period, the IFR will, unless modified, impose a worldwide licensing requirement on all products classified under Export Control Classification Numbers, or ECCNs, 3A090.a, 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, including all related software and technology. Any system that incorporates one or more of the covered integrated circuits, or ICs, (including but not limited to NVIDIA DGX, HGX, and MGX systems) will be covered by the new licensing requirement. The licensing requirement will include future NVIDIA ICs, boards, or systems classified with ECCN 3A090.a or 4A090.a, or corresponding .z ECCNs, achieving certain total processing performance and/or performance density. Unless a license exception is available, the worldwide licensing requirements will apply to the following NVIDIA products, and any others we develop that meet the characteristics of 3A090.a or 4A090.a, including but not limited to: A100, A800, H100, H200, H800, B100, B200, GB200, L4, L40S, and RTX 6000 Ada. The AI Diffusion IFR would divide the world into three tiers, relegating most countries to “Tier 2” status. The AI Diffusion IFR would confer special benefits on select “Universal Verified End Users”, or UVEU, and lesser benefits on “National Verified End Users”, or NVEU. The AI Diffusion IFR would have numerous effects that may negatively impact our long-term financial results and competitive position, including but not limited to the following. The AI Diffusion IFR would reduce the market for U.S.-designed and manufactured computing products and services, by expressly limiting exports, reexports, and transfers of covered products to Tier 2 countries and companies in Tier 1 countries that are either headquartered in Tier 2, or have an ultimate parent headquartered in a Tier 2 country. These restrictions would apply to all covered products, including products sold years ago. The AI Diffusion IFR would limit access to the market for IT services and computing infrastructure, by favoring a select number of government-approved firms that achieve UVEU status. UVEUs may choose to favor their own accelerators, platforms, and systems, rather than selecting products based on merit. The AI Diffusion IFR would encourage our customers to invest in alternatives that are not affected by USG regulations, including foreign competition. The AI Diffusion IFR would increase our and our customers’ costs of doing business, creating compliance challenges and risks, and impact our supply and distribution chains, which will be subject to new compliance burdens and related extraterritorial regulatory obligations. The AI Diffusion IFR would expose U.S. providers and the U.S. industry to an enhanced risk of retaliation from other countries, in the form of tariffs, import/export controls, or other regulatory actions. The AI Diffusion IFR’s licensing requirement could impact our ability to complete development of products in a timely manner, support existing customers using covered products, or supply customers with covered products outside the impacted regions, and may require us to transition certain operations out of one or more of the identified countries. 27 27 27 Table of Contents Table of Contents Following these 2022 export controls, we transitioned some operations, including certain testing, validation, and supply and distribution operations out of China and Hong Kong. Any future transitions could be costly and time consuming, and adversely affect our research and development and supply and distribution operations, as well as our revenue, during any such transition period. We expanded our Data Center product portfolio to offer new solutions, including those for which the USG does not require a license or advance notice before each shipment. To the extent that a customer requires products covered by the licensing requirements, we may seek a license for the customer. However, the licensing process is time-consuming. We have no assurance that the USG will grant such a license or that the USG will act on the license application in a timely manner or at all. Even if a license is approved, it may impose burdensome conditions that we or our customer or end users cannot or decide not to accept. The USG evaluates license requests in a closed process that does not have clear standards or an opportunity for review. For example, the Notified Advanced Computing, or “NAC,” process has not resulted in approvals for exports of products to customers in China. The license process for exports to D1 and D4 countries has been time-consuming and resulted in license conditions that are onerous, even for small-sized systems that are not able to train frontier AI models. The requirements have a disproportionate impact on NVIDIA and already have disadvantaged and may in the future disadvantage NVIDIA against certain of our competitors who sell products that are not subject to the new restrictions or may be able to acquire licenses for their products. Our competitive position has been harmed by the existing export controls, and our competitive position and future results may be further harmed, over the long term, if there are further changes in the USG’s export controls, including further expansion of the geographic, customer, or product scope of the controls, if customers purchase product from competitors, if customers develop their own internal solution, if we are unable to provide contractual warranty or other extended service obligations, if the USG does not grant licenses in a timely manner or denies licenses to significant customers or if we incur significant transition costs. Even if the USG grants any requested licenses, the licenses may be temporary or impose burdensome conditions that we or our customers or end users cannot or choose not to fulfill. The licensing requirements may benefit certain of our competitors, as the licensing process will make our pre-sale and post-sale technical support efforts more cumbersome and less certain and encourage customers in China to pursue alternatives to our products, including semiconductor suppliers based in China, Europe, and Israel. Given the increasing strategic importance of AI and rising geopolitical tensions, the USG has changed and may again change the export control rules at any time and further subject a wider range of our products to export restrictions and licensing requirements, negatively impacting our business and financial results. In the event of such change, we may be unable to sell our inventory of such products and may be unable to develop replacement products not subject to the licensing requirements, effectively excluding us from all or part of the China market, as well as other impacted markets, including the Middle East and countries designated “Tier 2” by the AI Diffusion IFR. For example, the USG has already imposed conditions to limit the ability of foreign firms to create and offer as a service large-scale GPU clusters, for example by imposing license conditions on the use of products to be exported to certain countries, and may impose additional conditions such as requiring chip tracking and throttling mechanisms that could disable or impair GPUs if certain events, including unauthorized system configuration, use, or location, are detected. The USG has already imposed export controls restricting certain gaming GPUs, and if the USG expands such controls to restrict additional gaming products, it may disrupt a significant portion of our supply and distribution chain and negatively impact sales of such products to markets outside China, including the U.S. and Europe. In addition, as the performance of the gaming GPUs increases over time, export controls may have a greater impact on our ability to compete in markets subject to those controls. Export controls may disrupt our supply and distribution chain for a substantial portion of our products, which are warehoused in and distributed from Hong Kong. Export controls restricting our ability to sell data center GPUs may also negatively impact demand for our networking products used in servers containing our GPUs. The USG may also impose export controls on our networking products, such as high-speed network interconnects, to limit the ability of downstream parties to create large clusters for frontier model training. Any new control that impacts a wider range of our products would likely have a disproportionate impact on NVIDIA and may disadvantage us against certain of our competitors that sell chips that are outside the scope of such control. Excessive or shifting export controls have already and may in the future encourage customers outside China and other impacted regions to “design-out” certain U.S. semiconductors from their products to reduce the compliance burden and risk, and to ensure that they are able to serve markets worldwide. Excessive or shifting export controls have already encouraged and may in the future encourage overseas governments to request that our customers purchase from our competitors rather than NVIDIA or other U.S. firms, harming our business, market position, and financial results. As a result, excessive or shifting export controls may negatively impact demand for our products and services not only in China, but also in other markets, such as Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. Excessive or shifting export controls increase the risk of investing in U.S. advanced semiconductor products, because by the time a new product is ready for market, it may be subject to new unilateral export controls restricting its sale. At the same time, such controls may increase investment in foreign competitors, which would be less likely to be restricted by U.S. controls. If additional products are subject to worldwide licensing requirements, we may incur significant inventory provisions and excess purchase obligation charges. In addition to export controls, the USG may impose restrictions on the import and sale of products that incorporate technologies developed or manufactured in whole or in part in China. For example, the USG is considering restrictions on the import and sale of certain automotive products in the United States, which if adopted and interpreted broadly, could impact our ability to develop and supply solutions for our automotive customers. 28 28 28 Table of Contents Table of Contents Additionally, restrictions imposed by the Chinese government on the duration of gaming activities and access to games may adversely affect our Gaming revenue, and increased oversight of digital platform companies may adversely affect our Data Center revenue. The Chinese government may also encourage customers to purchase from our China-based competitors, or impose restrictions on the sale to certain customers of our products, or any products containing components made by our partners and suppliers. For example, the Chinese government announced restrictions relating to certain sales of products containing certain products made by Micron, a supplier of ours. As another example, an agency of the Chinese government announced an Action Plan that endorses new standards regarding the compute performance per watt and per memory bandwidth of accelerators used in new and renovated data centers in China. If the Chinese government modifies or implements the Action Plan in a way that effectively prevents us from being able to design products to meet the new standard, this may restrict the ability of customers to use some of our data center products and may have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. Further restrictions on our products or the products of our suppliers could negatively impact our business and financial results. Finally, our business depends on our ability to receive consistent and reliable supply from our overseas partners, especially in Taiwan and South Korea. Any new restrictions that negatively impact our ability to receive supply of components, parts, or services from Taiwan and South Korea, would negatively impact our business and financial results.

Our accelerated computing platforms experience rapid changes in technology, customer requirements, competitive products, and industry standards. Our success depends on our ability to: •timely identify industry changes, adapt our strategies, and develop new or enhance and maintain existing products and technologies that meet the evolving needs of our markets, including addressing unexpected shifts in industry standards or disruptive technological innovations that could render our products incompatible with those developed by other companies; •develop or secure access to new products and technologies through investments in research and development; •launch new offerings with new business models including software, services, and cloud solutions, as well as software-, infrastructure-, or platform-as-a-service solutions; •expand the ecosystem for our products and technologies; •meet evolving and prevailing customer and industry safety, security, reliability expectations, and compliance standards; •manage product and software lifecycles to maintain customer and end-user satisfaction; •develop, acquire, maintain, and secure access to the internal and external infrastructure needed to scale our business, including sufficient energy for powering data centers using our products, acquisition integrations, customer support, e-commerce, IP licensing capabilities, and cloud service capacity; and •complete technical, financial, operational, compliance, sales and marketing investments for the above activities. We have invested in research and development in markets where we have a limited operating history, which may not produce meaningful revenue for several years, if at all. If we fail to develop or monetize new products and technologies, or if they do not become widely adopted, our financial results could be adversely affected. Obtaining design wins may involve a lengthy process and depends on our ability to anticipate and provide features and functionality that customers will demand. They also do not guarantee revenue. Failure to obtain a design win may prevent us from obtaining future design wins in subsequent generations. We cannot ensure that our products and technologies will provide value to our customers and partners. If we fail any of these key success criteria, our financial results may be harmed. We have entered into an intellectual property license arrangement with Groq, Inc., or Groq, that required significant, nonrefundable payments. Successfully incorporating the licensed technology into our architectures and product roadmaps requires significant engineering effort and may not occur on expected timelines or at all. The licensed technology may not achieve the desired results as designed or achieve customer or ecosystem adoption. The economic outcomes of this arrangement depend on our ability to translate the licensed technology into commercially viable products and services over time, and we may be unable to recover the associated costs or realize an adequate return on this spend. If our efforts to use the licensed technology are delayed or unsuccessful, our business, operating results, and financial condition could be negatively impacted. We entered into multi-year cloud service agreements to support our research and development activities. The timing and availability of these cloud services have changed and may continue to shift, impacting our revenue, expenses, and development timelines, and these arrangements may not deliver anticipated benefits. We also offer or plan to offer standalone software solutions, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA DRIVE, and other software products. These business models or strategies may not be successful, and we may fail to sell any meaningful standalone software or services. We may incur significant costs and may not achieve any significant revenue from these offerings.

Our accelerated computing platforms experience rapid changes in technology, customer requirements, competitive products, and industry standards. Our success depends on our ability to: •timely identify industry changes, adapt our strategies, and develop new or enhance and maintain existing products and technologies that meet the evolving needs of our markets, including addressing unexpected shifts in industry standards or disruptive technological innovations that could render our products incompatible with those developed by other companies; •develop or acquire new products and technologies through investments in research and development; •launch new offerings with new business models including software, services, and cloud solutions, as well as software-, infrastructure-, or platform-as-a-service solutions; •expand the ecosystem for our products and technologies; •meet evolving and prevailing customer and industry safety, security, reliability expectations, and compliance standards; •manage product and software lifecycles to maintain customer and end-user satisfaction; •develop, acquire, maintain, and secure access to the internal and external infrastructure needed to scale our business, including sufficient energy for powering data centers using our products, acquisition integrations, customer support, e-commerce, IP licensing capabilities, and cloud service capacity; and •complete technical, financial, operational, compliance, sales and marketing investments for the above activities. We have invested in research and development in markets where we have a limited operating history, which may not produce meaningful revenue for several years, if at all. If we fail to develop or monetize new products and technologies, or if they do not become widely adopted, our financial results could be adversely affected. Obtaining design wins may involve a lengthy process and depends on our ability to anticipate and provide features and functionality that customers will demand. They also do not guarantee revenue. Failure to obtain a design win may prevent us from obtaining future design wins in subsequent generations. We cannot ensure that our products and technologies will provide value to our customers and partners. If we fail any of these key success criteria, our financial results may be harmed. We offer enterprise customers NVIDIA DGX Cloud services, which include cloud-based infrastructure, software and services for training and deploying AI models. We have partnered with CSPs to host such software and services in their data centers, and we entered and may continue to enter into multi-year cloud service agreements to support these offerings and our research and development activities. The timing and availability of these cloud services have changed and may continue to shift, impacting our revenue, expenses, and development timelines. NVIDIA DGX Cloud services may not be successful and will take time, resources, and investment. We also offer or plan to offer standalone software solutions, including NVIDIA AI Enterprise, NVIDIA Omniverse, NVIDIA DRIVE, and other software products. These new business models or strategies may not be successful, and we may fail to sell any meaningful standalone software or services. We may incur significant costs and may not achieve any significant revenue from these offerings.