NVIDIA CORP 10-Q

ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS Other than the risk factors listed below, there have been no material changes from the risk factors previously described under Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 29, 2023 and Items 1A of our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2023 and July 30, 2023. Purchasing or owning NVIDIA common stock involves investment risks including, but not limited to, the risks described in Item 1A of our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended January 29, 2023, in Items 1A of our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarters ended April 30, 2023 and July 30, 2023, and below. Additionally, any one of those risks could harm our business, financial condition and results of operations or reputation, which could cause our stock price to decline. Additional risks, trends and uncertainties not presently known to us or that we currently believe are immaterial may also harm our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation. Failure to estimate customer demand properly has led and could lead to mismatches between supply and demand. We use third parties to manufacture and assemble our products, and we have long manufacturing lead times. We are not provided guaranteed wafer, component and capacity supply, and our supply deliveries and production may be non-linear within a quarter or year. If our estimates of customer demand are ultimately inaccurate, as we have experienced in the past, there could be a significant mismatch between supply and demand. This mismatch has resulted in both product shortages and excess inventory, has varied across our market platforms, and has significantly harmed our financial results. We build finished products and maintain inventory in advance of anticipated demand. While we have in the past entered and may in the future enter into long-term supply and capacity commitments, we may not be able to secure sufficient commitments for capacity to address our business needs, or our long-term demand expectations may change. These risks may increase as we shorten our product development cycles or enter new lines of business, which may require us to integrate new suppliers into our supply chain, creating additional supply chain complexity. Additionally, our ability to sell certain products has been and could be impeded if components from third parties that are necessary for the finished product are not available. This risk may increase as a result of our platform strategy. In periods of shortages impacting the semiconductor industry and/or limited supply or capacity in our supply chain, the lead times on our orders may be extended. We have previously experienced and may continue to experience extended lead times of more than 12 months. We have paid premiums and provided deposits to secure future supply and capacity, which have increased our product costs and may continue to do so. If our existing suppliers are unable to scale their capabilities to meet our supply needs, we may require additional sources of capacity, which may require additional deposits. We may not have the ability to reduce our supply commitments at the same rate or at all if our revenue declines. Many additional factors have caused and/or could in the future cause us to either underestimate or overestimate our customers’ future demand for our products, or otherwise cause a mismatch between supply and demand for our products and impact the timing and volume of our revenue, including: • changes in product development cycles and time to market; • competing technologies and competitor product releases and announcements; • changes in business and economic conditions resulting in decreased end demand; • sudden or sustained government lockdowns or actions to control case spread of global or local health issues; • rapidly changing technology or customer requirements; • new product introductions and transitions resulting in less demand for existing products; • new or unexpected end use cases; • increase in demand for competitive products, including competitive actions; 36 • business decisions made by third parties; • the demand for accelerated or AI-related cloud services, including our own software and NVIDIA DGX cloud services; • changes that impact the ecosystem for the architectures underlying our products and technologies; • the demand for our products relating to cryptocurrency mining, our Omniverse platform, third-party large language models and generative AI models; or • government actions or changes in governmental policies, such as export controls or increased restrictions on gaming usage. Demand for our data center systems and products has surged over the last three quarters and our demand visibility extends into next year. To meet this expected demand, we have increased our purchase obligations with existing suppliers, added new suppliers, and entered into prepaid supply and capacity agreements. These increased purchase volumes, the number of suppliers, and the integration of new suppliers into our supply chain, may create more supply chain complexity and execution risk. We expect to continue to enter into supplier and capacity arrangements and expect our supply to increase each quarter through next year. We may incur inventory provisions or impairments if our inventory or supply or capacity commitments exceed demand for our products or demand declines. Our customer orders and longer-term demand estimates may change or may not be correct, as we have experienced in the past. Product transitions are complex and can impact our revenue as we often ship both new and prior architecture products simultaneously and we and our channel partners prepare to ship and support new products. Due to our product introduction cycles, we are almost always in various stages of transitioning the architecture of our Data Center, Professional Visualization, and Gaming products. We will have a broader and faster Data Center product launch cadence to meet a growing and diverse set of AI opportunities. The increased frequency of these transitions may magnify the challenges associated with managing our supply and demand due to long manufacturing lead times. Qualification time for new products, customers anticipating product transitions and channel partners reducing channel inventory of prior architectures ahead of new product introductions can create reductions or volatility in our revenue. We have experienced and may in the future experience reduced demand for current generation architectures when customers anticipate transitions, and we may be unable to sell multiple product architectures at the same time for current and future architecture transitions. If we are unable to execute our architectural transitions as planned for any reason, our financial results may be negatively impacted. In addition, the bring up of new product architectures is complex due to functionality challenges and quality concerns not identified in manufacturing testing. These product quality issues may incur costs, increase our warranty costs, and delay further production of our architecture. Deployment of new products to customers creates additional challenges due to the complexity of our technologies, which has impacted and may in the future impact the timing of customer purchases or otherwise impact our demand. While we have managed prior product transitions and have previously sold multiple product architectures at the same time, these transitions are difficult, may impair our ability to predict demand and impact our supply mix, and we may incur additional costs. Our End Customers often do not purchase directly from us but purchase through multiple original equipment manufacturers, original device manufacturers, system integrators, distributors, and other channel partners. As a result, the decisions made by our multiple original equipment manufacturers, original device manufacturers, system integrators, distributors, and other channel partners, and in response to changing market conditions and changes in end user demand for our products have impacted and could in the future continue to impact our ability to properly forecast demand, particularly as they are based on estimates provided by various downstream parties. If we underestimate our customers' future demand for our products, our foundry partners may not have adequate lead-time or capacity to increase production and we may not be able to obtain sufficient inventory to fill orders on a timely basis. Even if we are able to increase production levels to meet customer demand, we may not be able to do so in a timely manner, or our contract manufacturers may experience supply constraints. If we cannot procure sufficient supply to meet demand or otherwise fail to fulfill our customers’ orders on a timely basis, or at all, our customer relationships could be damaged, we could lose revenue and market share and our reputation could be harmed. Additionally, since some of our products are part of a 37 complex data center buildout, supply constraints or availability issues with respect to any one component have had and may have a broader revenue impact. If we overestimate our customers’ future demand for our products, or if customers cancel or defer orders or choose to purchase from our competitors, we may not be able to reduce our inventory or other contractual purchase commitments. In the past, we have experienced a reduction in average selling prices, including due to channel pricing programs that we have implemented and may continue to implement, as a result of our overestimation of future demand, and we may need to continue these reductions. We have had to increase prices for certain of our products as a result of our suppliers’ increase in prices, and we may need to continue to do so for other products in the future. We have also written-down our inventory, incurred cancellation penalties, and recorded impairments. These impacts were amplified by our placement of non-cancellable and non-returnable purchasing terms, well in advance of our historical lead times and could be exacerbated if we need to make changes to the design of future products. The risk of these impacts has increased and may continue to increase as our purchase obligations and prepaids have grown and are expected to continue to grow and become a greater portion of our total supply. All of these factors may negatively impact our gross margins and financial results. We build technology and products for use cases and applications that may be new or may not yet exist, such as NVIDIA DGX cloud services, NVIDIA AI Foundations, our Omniverse platform, third-party large language models and generative AI models. Our demand estimates for new use cases, applications, and services can be incorrect and create volatility in our revenue or supply levels, and we may not be able to generate significant revenue from these use cases, applications, and services. New technologies such as generative AI models have emerged, and while they have driven increased demand for Data Center compute infrastructure, the long-term trajectory is unknown. Because our products may be used in multiple use cases and applications, it is difficult for us to estimate with any reasonable degree of precision the impact of generative AI models on our reported revenue or forecasted demand. Additionally, we started shipping our CPU product offerings, the Grace CPU and Grace Hopper Superchips, in the third quarter of fiscal year 2024. Our ability to adequately predict our CPU demand may create volatility in our revenue or supply levels. Challenges in estimating demand could become more pronounced or volatile in the future on both a global and regional basis. Extended lead times may occur if we experience other supply constraints caused by natural disasters, pandemics or other events. In addition, geopolitical tensions, such as those involving Taiwan and China, which comprise a significant portion of our revenue and where we have suppliers, contract manufacturers, and assembly partners who are critical to our supply continuity, could have a material adverse impact on us. The use of our GPUs other than that for which they were designed and marketed, including new and unexpected use cases, has impacted and can in the future impact demand for our products, including by leading to inconsistent spikes and drops in demand. For example, several years ago, our Gaming GPUs began to be used for mining digital currencies such as Ethereum. It is difficult for us to estimate with any reasonable degree of precision the past or current impact of cryptocurrency mining, or forecast the future impact of cryptocurrency mining, on demand for our products. Volatility in the cryptocurrency market, including new compute technologies, price changes in cryptocurrencies, government cryptocurrency policies and regulations, new cryptocurrency standards, and changes in the method of verifying blockchain transactions, has impacted and can in the future impact cryptocurrency mining and demand for our products and can further impact our ability to estimate demand for our products. Changes to cryptocurrency standards and processes including, but not limited to, the Ethereum 2.0 merge in 2022, have reduced and may in the future decrease the usage of GPUs for Ethereum mining. This has created and may in the future create increased aftermarket sales of our GPUs, which could negatively impact retail prices for our GPUs and reduce demand for our new GPUs. We previously introduced Lite Hash Rate, or LHR, GeForce GPUs with limited Ethereum mining capability and provided cryptocurrency mining processors, or CMP, products in an effort to address demand from gamers and direct miners to CMP. Following the Ethereum 2.0 merge, NVIDIA Ampere and Ada Lovelace GPU architectures no longer include LHR. In general, our new products or previously sold products may be resold online or on the unauthorized “gray market,” which also makes demand forecasting difficult. Gray market products and reseller marketplaces compete with our new products and distribution channels. Additionally, we depend on developers, customers, and other third parties to build, enhance, and maintain accelerated computing applications that leverage our platforms. We also rely on third-party content providers and publishers to make their content available on our platforms such as GeForce NOW. Failure by 38 developers, customers, and other third parties to build, enhance, and maintain applications that leverage our platforms, or failure by third-party content providers or publishers to make their content available on reasonable terms or at all for use by our customers or end users on our platforms, could adversely affect customer demand. International sales and operations are a significant part of our business, which exposes us to risks that could harm our business. We sell our products internationally, and we also have operations and conduct business internationally. Our semiconductor wafers are manufactured, assembled, tested and packaged by third parties located outside of the United States, and we generated 65% and 62% of our revenue during the third quarter and first nine months of fiscal year 2024 from sales outside of the United States, respectively. Due to recent USG licensing requirements, we expect that our sales to China and other affected destinations will decline significantly in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2024. The global nature of our business subjects us to a number of risks and uncertainties, which have had in the past and could in the future have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations, including domestic and international economic and political conditions between countries in which we and our suppliers and manufacturers do business, government lockdowns to control case spread of global or local health issues, differing legal standards with respect to protection of IP and employment practices, domestic and international business and cultural practices that differ, disruptions to capital markets, counter-inflation policies, and/or currency fluctuations, and natural disasters, acts of war or other military actions, terrorism, public health issues, and other catastrophic events. Business disruptions could harm our operations, lead to a decline in revenue and increase our costs. Our worldwide operations could be disrupted by natural disasters and extreme weather conditions, power or water shortages, telecommunications failures, supplier disruptions, terrorist attacks, or acts of violence, political and/or civil unrest, acts of war or other military actions, epidemics or pandemics, abrupt regulatory deterioration, and other natural or man-made disasters and catastrophic events. Our corporate headquarters, a large portion of our current data center capacity, and a portion of our research and development activities are located in California, and other critical business operations, finished goods inventory, and some of our suppliers are located in Asia, making our operations vulnerable to natural disasters such as earthquakes, wildfires, or other business disruptions occurring in these geographical areas. Catastrophic events can also have an impact on third-party vendors who provide us critical infrastructure services for IT and research and development systems and personnel. Geopolitical and domestic political developments and other events beyond our control, can increase economic volatility globally. Political instability, changes in government or adverse political developments in or around any of the major countries in which we do business may harm our business, financial condition and results of operations. Worldwide geopolitical tensions and conflicts, including but not limited to China, Hong Kong, Israel, Korea and Taiwan where the manufacture of our product components and final assembly of our products are concentrated may result in changing regulatory requirements, and other disruptions that could impact our operations and operating strategies, product demand, access to global markets, hiring, and profitability. For example, other countries have restricted and may continue in the future to restrict business with the State of Israel, where we have engineering, sales support operations and manufacturing, and companies with Israeli operations, including by economic boycotts. Our operations could be harmed and our costs could increase if manufacturing, logistics or other operations are disrupted for any reason, including natural disasters, high heat events or water shortages, power shortages, information technology system failures, military actions or economic, business, labor, environmental, public health, or political issues. The ultimate impact on us, our third-party foundries and other suppliers of being located and consolidated in certain geographical areas is unknown. In the event a disaster, war or catastrophic event affects us, the third-party systems on which we rely, or our customers, our business could be harmed as a result of declines in revenue, increases in expenses, and substantial expenditures and time spent to fully resume operations. All of these risks and conditions could materially adversely affect our future sales and operating results. We are monitoring the impact of the geopolitical conflict in and around Israel on our operations, including the health and safety of our approximately 3,400 employees in the region who primarily support the research and development, operations, and sales and marketing of our networking products. Our operating expenses in the third quarter of fiscal year 2024 include expenses for financial support to impacted employees and charitable activity. We believe our global supply chain for our networking products has not experienced any significant impact. Further, in connection with the conflict, a significant number and percentage of our employees have 39 been called-up for active military duty in Israel. Accordingly, some of our employees in Israel may be absent for an extended and indeterminate period, which may cause disruption to our product development or operations. In the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, we did not experience any significant impact or expense to our business; however, if the conflict is extended, it could impact future product development, operations, and revenue or create other uncertainty for our business. Additionally, interruptions or delays in services from CSPs, data center co-location partners, and other third parties on which we rely, including due to the events described above or other events such as the insolvency of these parties, could impair our ability to provide our products and services and harm our business. As we increase our reliance on these third-party systems and services, our exposure to damage from service interruptions, defects, disruptions, outages, shortages and other performance and quality problems may increase. Data centers depend on access to clean water and predictable energy. Power or water shortages, or regulations that limit energy or water availability, could impair the ability of our customers to expand their data center capacity and consume our products and services. We may not be able to realize the potential benefits of business investments or acquisitions, and we may not be able to successfully integrate acquisition targets, which could hurt our ability to grow our business, develop new products or sell our products. We have acquired and invested and may continue to do so in businesses that offer products, services and technologies that we believe will help expand or enhance our existing strategic objectives. Acquisitions or investments involve significant challenges and risks and could impair our ability to grow our business, develop new products or sell our products and ultimately could have a negative impact on our financial results. If we pursue a particular transaction, we may limit our ability to enter into other transactions that could help us achieve our other strategic objectives. If we are unable to timely complete acquisitions, including due to delays and challenges in obtaining regulatory approvals, we may be unable to pursue other transactions, we may not be able to retain critical talent from the target company, technology may evolve and make the acquisition less attractive, and other changes can take place which could reduce the anticipated benefits of the transaction and negatively impact our business. Regulators could also impose conditions that reduce the ultimate value of our acquisitions. In addition, to the extent that our perceived ability to consummate acquisitions has been harmed, future acquisitions may be more difficult, complex or expensive. Further, our investments in publicly traded companies could create volatility in our results and may generate losses up to the value of the investment. In addition, we have invested and may continue to invest in private companies to further our strategic objectives and to support certain key business initiatives. These companies can include early-stage companies still defining their strategic direction. Many of the instruments in which we invest are non-marketable and illiquid at the time of our initial investment, and we are not always able to achieve a return. To the extent any of the companies in which we invest are not successful, we could recognize an impairment and/or lose all or part of our investment. Our investment portfolio may contain industry sector concentration risks, and a decline in any one or multiple industry sectors could increase our impairment losses. We face additional risks related to acquisitions and strategic investments, including the diversion of capital and other resources, including management’s attention; difficulty in realizing a satisfactory return and uncertainties to realize the benefits of an acquisition or strategic investment, if at all; difficulty or inability in obtaining governmental, regulatory approval or restrictions or other consents and approvals or financing; legal proceedings initiated as a result of an acquisition or investment; and potential failure of our due diligence processes to identify significant issues with the assets or company in which we are investing or are acquiring. Additional risks related to acquisitions include, but are not limited to: • difficulty in integrating the technology, systems, products, policies, processes, or operations and integrating and retaining the employees, including key personnel, of the acquired business; • assumption of liabilities and incurring amortization expenses, impairment charges to goodwill or write-downs of acquired assets; • integrating accounting, forecasting and controls, procedures and reporting cycles; • coordinating and integrating operations, particularly in countries in which we do not currently operate; 40 • stock price impact, fines, fees or reputation harm if we are unable to obtain regulatory approval for an acquisition or are otherwise unable to close an acquisition; • potential issuances of debt to finance our acquisitions, resulting in increased debt, increased interest expense, and compliance with debt covenants or other restrictions; • the potential for our acquisitions to result in dilutive issuances of our equity securities; • the potential variability of the amount and form of any performance-based consideration; • negative changes in general economic conditions in the regions or the industries in which we or our target operate; • exposure to additional cybersecurity risks and vulnerabilities; and • impairment of relationships with, or loss of our or our target’s employees, vendors and customers. For example, when integrating acquisition target systems into our own, we have experienced and may continue to experience challenges including lengthy and costly systems integration, delays in purchasing and shipping products, difficulties with system integration via electronic data interchange and other processes with our key suppliers and customers, and training and change management needs of integration personnel. These challenges have impacted our results of operations and may continue to do so in the future. We receive a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of partners and distributors and we have a concentration of sales to End Customers, and our revenue could be adversely affected if we lose or are prevented from selling to any of these End Customers. We receive a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of customers within our distribution and partner network. Sales to Customer A represented 12% of total revenue for the third quarter of fiscal year 2024, and sales to Customer B represented 11% of total revenue for the first nine months of fiscal year 2024, both of which were attributable to the Compute & Networking segment. With several of these channel partners, we are selling multiple products and systems in our portfolio through their channels. Our operating results depend on sales within our partner network, as well as the ability of these partners to sell products that incorporate our processors. In the future, these partners may decide to purchase fewer products, not to incorporate our products into their ecosystem, or to alter their purchasing patterns in some other way. Because most of our sales are made on a purchase order basis, our customers can generally cancel, change or delay product purchase commitments with little notice to us and without penalty. Our partners or customers may develop their own solutions; our customers may purchase products from our competitors; and our partners may discontinue sales or lose market share in the markets for which they purchase our products, all of which may alter partners’ or customers’ purchasing patterns. Our sales to Customer A and Customer B were largely in support of two End Customers. One End Customer is estimated to have represented approximately 15% and 17% of total revenue for the third quarter and first nine months of fiscal year 2024, respectively. A second End Customer is estimated to have represented approximately 13% and 10% of total revenue for the third quarter and first nine months of fiscal year 2024, respectively. Both of these End Customers were primarily attributable to our Compute & Networking segment. Our estimated Compute & Networking End Customer demand is expected to remain concentrated. Our customers sell to End Customers. Our End Customers often do not purchase directly from us but purchase through multiple original equipment manufacturers, original device manufacturers, system integrators, distributors, and other channel partners. If end demand increases or our finished goods supply availability is concentrated near a quarter end, the system integrators, distributors, and channel partners may have limited ability to increase their credit, which could impact the timing and amount of our revenue. The loss of any of our large customers, a significant reduction in purchases by them, our inability to sell to a customer due to U.S. or other countries’ trade restrictions, or any difficulties in collecting accounts receivable would likely harm our financial condition and results of operations. Our operations could be affected by the complex laws, rules and regulations to which our business is subject, and political and other actions may adversely impact our business. 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; data privacy requirements; competition and antitrust; advertising; 41 employment; product regulations; cybersecurity; environmental, health, and safety requirements; the responsible use of AI; climate change; 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, 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 requests for information from regulators in the European Union and China regarding our sales of GPUs and our efforts to allocate supply, and we expect to receive additional requests for information in the future. 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 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 U.S. government 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 End Customer 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, refining, and deploying large language models. 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 associated 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 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 42 application, prohibit us from exporting our products to any or all customers in one or more markets, including but not limited to China, 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 cloud service providers 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. Even the possibility of additional export controls has negatively impacted and may in the future negatively impact demand for our products, benefitting 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 our efforts to supply the China market, and if they conclude that we have violated any applicable law in China or the commitments we entered at the close of our Mellanox acquisition, this could subject us to various penalties or restrictions on our ability to conduct our business, any of which could have a material and adverse impact on our business, operating results and financial condition. 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. On October 17, 2023, the USG announced new and updated licensing requirements 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 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 the licensing requirements were effective immediately for shipments of our A100, A800, H100, H800, and L40S products. Following these 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, 43 as well as our revenue, during any such transition period. We are working to expand our Data Center product portfolio to offer new regulation-compliant solutions, including those for which the USG does not wish to have any 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 but 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. The USG is evaluating license requests in a non-public process that does not have clear standards or an opportunity for review. 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. Management of these new license and other requirements is complicated and time consuming. Our competitive position has been harmed, 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 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. For example, the USG is seeking to impose conditions to limit the ability of foreign firms to create and offer as a service large-scale GPU clusters, for example by requiring chip tracking and throttling mechanisms that would disable or impair GPUs if certain system or use conditions 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. 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 datacenter 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. 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. 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 impose restrictions on the sale to certain End 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. Further restrictions on our products or the products of our suppliers could negatively impact our business and financial results. 44 Finally, our business depends on our ability to receive consistent and reliable supply from our overseas partners, especially in Taiwan. Any new restrictions that negatively impact our ability to receive supply of components, parts, or services from Taiwan, would negatively impact our business and financial results. Issues relating to the responsible use of our technologies, including AI in our offerings, may result in reputational or financial harm and liability. Concerns relating to the responsible use of new and evolving technologies, such as AI, in our products and services may result in reputational or financial harm and liability and may cause us to incur costs to resolve such issues. We are increasingly building AI capabilities into many of our products and services, and we also offer stand-alone AI applications. AI poses emerging legal, social, and ethical issues and presents risks and challenges that could affect its adoption, and therefore our business. If we enable or offer solutions that draw controversy due to their perceived or actual impact on society, such as AI solutions that have unintended consequences or are controversial because of their impact on human rights, privacy, employment, or other social, economic, or political issues, or if we are unable to develop effective internal policies and frameworks relating to the responsible development and use of AI models and systems offered through our sales channels, we may experience brand or reputational harm, competitive harm or legal liability. Complying with multiple regulations from different jurisdictions related to AI could increase our cost of doing business, may change the way that we operate in certain jurisdictions, or may impede our ability to offer certain products and services in certain jurisdictions if we are unable to comply with regulations. Compliance with government regulation of AI, including under proposed legislation regulating AI in jurisdictions such as the European Union as well as under any U.S. regulation adopted in response to the Biden administration’s Executive Order on AI, may also increase the cost of related research and development, and create additional reporting and/or transparency requirements. For example, regulation adopted in response to the Executive Order on AI could require us to notify the USG of certain safety test results and other information. Furthermore, changes in AI-related regulation could disproportionately impact and disadvantage us and require us to change our business practices, which may negatively impact our financial results. Our failure to address concerns and regulation relating to the responsible use of AI by us or others could undermine public confidence in AI and slow adoption of AI in our products and services or cause reputational or financial harm.