27/02/2026

FRIDAY | FEB 27, 2026

17

BIZ & FINANCE

Nvidia smashes forecasts with record quarter

Binance bets on Greek labour,

security for EU growth

TOKYO: Binance co-CEO Richard Teng ( pic ) said yesterday Greece’s labour force and security profile gave it the edge over larger financial centres when the world’s biggest cryptocurrency

o Insatiable demand for its chips shows no sign of cooling

For the full fiscal year ending Jan 25, 2026, Nvidia reported revenue of US$215.9 billion, up 65% from the previous year, with data centre revenue reaching US$193.7 billion – a 68% annual gain. Perhaps more significant for investors was Nvidia’s guidance for the current quarter. The company said it is not assuming any data centre computing revenue from China in its outlook, an acknowledgement of the ongoing impact of US export controls on its ability to sell advanced chips to the world’s second-largest economy. Even if the US government has greenlit exports of “small amounts” of lower powered chips to China, “we have yet to generate any revenue, and we do not know whether any imports will be allowed into China”, Nvidia chief financial officer Colette Kress told analysts. The compan]y forecast the current quarter’s revenue at US$78 billion, plus or minus 2% – comfortably above the roughly US$72 billion Wall Street had been expecting, and a figure that analysts said would go a long way toward silencing doubts about the durability of AI infrastructure spending. Considered a main bellwether for the AI phenomenon, the recurring question for Nvidia is whether the boom will continue to accelerate as the technology takes over more corners of the broader economy. Despite increased volatility around AI on Wall Street, Nvidia shares are up by more than 50% over the past year, though just 2.2% year to date, before the latest earnings. – AFP

Nvidia, which remains the dominant supplier of the AI chips and technology used to train and deliver generative AI capability. Huang said the AI industry had reached a decisive turning point driven by the rise of so-called agentic AI – systems that can take decisions and act autonomously on behalf of humans. “We have now seen the inflection of agentic AI and the usefulness of agents across the world,” he said, adding that enterprises everywhere were seeing “incredible” demand because of it. He pointed to the rapid adoption of AI coding and productivity tools – including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex – as evidence that AI was now delivering tangible returns for both customers and cloud providers. Speaking to analysts, he warned that the traditional software industry was being fundamentally transformed by this adoption, an argument that has seen shares in enterprise software companies spiral lower in recent sessions on Wall Street. “What used to be software running on computers has now gone into AI,” he said, “and that translates directly to growth, and that translates directly to revenues” for companies deploying AI solutions. The company’s data center division, which sells the high-powered chips used to train and run AI models, was once again the engine of growth. Revenue from that segment hit a record US$62.3 billion in the quarter, up 75% from a year earlier and up 22% from the prior quarter.

exchange was selecting a regulatory home in Europe. Binance, which

holds about US$44 billion worth of bitcoin in its customer wallets, last month applied in Greece to operate in the European Union under the trading bloc’s Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) scheme. Crypto companies must obtain a MiCA license by July 2026 to continue operating in the market. Greece has yet to issue a MiCA license, compared with 45 in Germany and 22 in the Netherlands, based on regulator data, making it an unconventional choice for the crypto giant, which has some 300 million users and has a global regulatory home in Abu Dhabi. “The license is pretty standard throughout Europe, so we have to think through many other factors, whether it’s social, whether it’s talent pool, safety and security issues,” Teng said on the sidelines of the GFTN Forum in Tokyo. “Greece is where we think will be a good base for us to expand in Europe.” Teng, a former regulator in Singapore and Abu Dhabi, said he would leave it to the EU to determine if Binance gets its licence by the July deadline. Since taking the helm in November 2023, he has sought to make Binance the “most regulated” crypto exchange in the world. His predecessor and Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, pleaded guilty to violating US money-laundering laws, resulting in a nearly four-month prison sentence and a US$4.3 billion fine. Teng said Zhao, who was pardoned by US President Donald Trump last year, remained active as a shareholder and the founder would have to answer questions about a potential return to the company. Questions about the company resurfaced recently when The Wall Street Journal and other outlets reported that Binance investigators found evidence of US$1.7 billion in crypto transfers with Iranian and Russian actors, prompting an inquiry from Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat. Teng said the reports were misleading and the Binance investigators cited in the reports were terminated for breaching data-handling policies, not for uncovering suspect transfers. “We do not serve residents of sanctioned countries,” he said, acknowledging that it was impossible to totally eliminate suspicious transactions made through the blockchain. In December, Binance named Yi He, a co-founder and long-time romantic partner of Zhao, as the exchange’s co-CEO. Teng said the move was a “natural progression” as the company grows and that he shares “complementary strengths” with Yi He. Crypto assets have been on a wild ride over the past year, with bitcoin down about 50% from its record high of just over US$126,000 in October. Binance spent US$1 billion from an emergency fund to buy bitcoin to help prop up its value. Teng said that retail sentiment about crypto had weakened but adoption and flows among financial professionals remained stable. “The smart money, the institutional money, the long-term money still continues to invest,” he added. – Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO: Nvidia on Wednesday reported blockbuster quarterly results that blew past Wall Street expectations, posting record revenue of US$68.1 billion (RM265 billion) as insatiable demand for its artificial intelligence chips showed no sign of cooling. The figures – up 73% from a year ago and well above the US$65.7 billion analysts had forecast – sent a powerful signal that the technology buildout dominated by Nvidia that underpins the global AI boom remains in full swing. Net income for the quarter more than doubled year-on-year to US$42.96 billion, causing a share price bump that was quickly erased by apparent investor profit taking. Nvidia designs the graphics processing units (GPUs) that have become the backbone of the global artificial intelligence boom. Founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, who remains CEO, the California-based company commands a market capitalisation exceeding US$4.7 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. Combined capital expenditure from the four major AI builders – Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft – could approach US$700 billion this year as the tech giants race to stay ahead in the crucial technology. A large share of that spending lands at

Screens displaying the Nvidia logo in Toulouse, southwestern France. – AFPPIC

US tariffs hit less than expected: European development bank LONDON: The economic impact of US President Donald Trump’s tariffs was “much lower” than expected last year, Europe’s development bank said yesterday, as it raised its growth forecast for 2026. The EBRD was founded in 1991 to help former Soviet bloc nations embrace free-market economies, before extending its reach to the Middle East, North Africa and parts of sub-Saharan Africa. Bosnia and Herzegovina, Moldova or Tunisia, but overall the picture is unchanged,” Javorcik said.

She cautioned that “we have not felt the full impact of tariffs yet”, as a large share of 2025 exports reached US markets before the measures took effect. The EBRD also said that the artificial intelligence boom has boosted American imports of technology-related goods, including semiconductors. This could benefit countries in Central Europe, the Baltics, Bulgaria and Romania that export these types of products, Javorcik said. – AFP

“The impact of the US tariffs for our countries of operation has been limited, much lower than anticipated,” Javorcik said. In its latest report released yesterday, the EBRD forecast growth to accelerate to 3.6% this year and rise further to 3.7% in 2027. “There are some countries that potentially could gain to see lower tariffs, like Serbia,

The US Supreme Court last week struck down much of Trump’s tariff policy, prompting him to impose a new 10% duty under a different law, which he has vowed to raise to 15%. But for countries where the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development operates, these developments will only bring “very limited” changes, chief economist Beata Javorcik told AFP.