Finance

Nvidia warns of competition from China’s Huawei, despite U.S. sanctions

Published

7 hours ago

February 27, 2025

BEIJING — Chip giant Nvidia has flagged heightened competition from Huawei, despite U.S. restrictions on the Chinese telecommunications company.

In an annual filing Wednesday, Nvidia listed Huawei among its current competitors, including it in the list for a second straight year. The company, blacklisted by the U.S. for national security reasons, did not feature among Nvidia’s competitors for at least three prior years.

Nvidia listed Huawei among its competitors in four of five categories, including chips, cloud services, computing processing and networking products.

“There’s a fair amount of competition in China,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told CNBC’s Jon Fortt Wednesday.

“Huawei, other companies, are … quite vigorous and very, very competitive,” Huang said.

Since 2019, the U.S. has restricted Huawei’s ability to access technology from American suppliers, from advanced 5G chips to Google’s Android operating system.

Nvidia CEO Huang: Revenue in China before export controls was twice as high as it is now

Huawei’s revenue exceeded 860 billion yuan ($118.27 billion) in 2024, state media reported, a 22% jump in revenue from 2023, and the fastest growth since a 32% increase in 2016, according to CNBC calculations of publicly released figures. Huawei typically publishes its annual reports in March.

The company’s revenue barely grew in 2020, and plunged by nearly 29% in 2021. Its consumer segment was hit hard, and even as revenue rose 17% year on year to 251.5 billion yuan in 2023, it was just over half of what the unit generated at its peak in 2020.

The telecommunications company started to make a comeback in the smartphone market in 2023 with the release of its Mate 60 Pro in China. Reviews indicated the device offers download speeds associated with 5G — thanks to an advanced semiconductor chip.

Just over a year later, Huawei launched the Mate 70 smartphone series that uses the company’s first fully self-developed operating system, HarmonyOS NEXT.

Finance

401(k) balances hit second highest on record: Fidelity

Published

1 hour ago

February 27, 2025

Business Finance News

Ramsey Solutions financial expert George Kamel weighs in on Americans working past retirement age and provides advice for investors.

Balances for 401(k) retirement accounts hit the “second-highest average on record” in the final quarter of 2024, according to new data from Fidelity Investments.

The financial services company found in its newly-released fourth-quarter retirement analysis that balances for that type of retirement plan averaged $131,700.

That figure marked a jump of 11% year-over-year, according to Fidelity.

Close up of a 401(k) statement with a pie chart indicating asset allocation.To see more of my financial images click on the link below: (iStock / iStock)

Compared to 2024’s third quarter, however, average balances for 401(k)s posted a 0.5% decline, the analysis showed. The third-quarter was when 401(k) plans notched their “highest average on record” for balances, with an average of $132,300.

The rate at which 401(k) retirement plan holders socked away money inched up year-over-year to 14.1% in the fourth quarter, according to Fidelity.

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Similar to 401(k)s, average balances for two other popular retirement vehicles – IRAs and 403(b)s – saw small declines of 1% from the third quarter but showed year-over-year increases.

Fidelity pegged the average balance for 403(b) accounts at $117,800 in the fourth quarter, up 11% compared to a year ago.

Meanwhile, IRA accounts held average balances of $127,543. That’s an increase of 8% from the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the report.

A senior couple using a laptop to help organize their retirement plans. (iStock)

Fidelity’s fourth-quarter analysis included over 50 million retirement accounts.

Overall, the financial services company said people building nest eggs “experienced a year of positive growth” in 2024.

Retirement contribution rates went up for almost 40% of those saving for their golden years, Fidelity also reported. On average, the increase was 2.9%.

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“As we have for several quarters now, we observed upwards savings trends in Q4. This is encouraging news and is particularly important for many Gen X savers, who are able to make catch-up contributions,” Head of Fidelity Wealth Roger Stiles said in a statement. “This is an important consideration as the April tax deadline approaches where investors may be able to contribute to an IRA for potential tax deductions for 2024.”

The deadline for individual tax return filing is April 15, according to the IRS.

Fidelity also highlighted the retirement saving efforts of Generation X – people born between 1965 and 1980 – in its latest analysis.

When it came to IRAs, Gen Xers boosted their average contributions 16% year-over-year, according to the financial services company.

IRS INCREASES 401(K), OTHER 2025 RETIREMENT PLAN CONTRIBUTION LIMITS

Meanwhile, Gen Xers that have been putting money in 401(k) accounts regularly over 15 years achieved average account balances of $589,400, a jump of 18% from the same period last year, per Fidelity.

A person puts money into a retirement savings jar. (iStock / iStock)

Americans think $1.46 million is the amount of money necessary to experience a comfortable retirement, according to a study released by Northwestern Mutual last year.

The Transamerica Center for Retirement Studies found in an August 2024 report that the median age of retirement for middle-class retirees was 62.

Finance

Nvidia’s auto segment revenue surges to record high on demand for driver-assist tech

Published

3 hours ago

February 27, 2025

Business Finance News

Signage at the Nvidia Corp. offices in Taipei, Taiwan, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Photographer: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images

U.S. chipmaker Nvidia‘s auto segment revenue more than doubled in the latest quarter to a record high on strong demand for driver-assist software.

While the company’s biggest revenue stream by far is chip systems that power artificial intelligence, Nvidia has predicted its products that power driver-assist technology could become its next “billion-dollar” business.

Revenue of Nvidia’s automotive and robotics segment rose 103% year on year to $570 million in the fourth quarter of the 2025 fiscal year. That brought the segment’s revenue for the fiscal year to $1.69 billion, above $1 billion for a second-straight year.

The latest increase in revenue was due to to sales of Nvidia’s “self-driving platforms,” according to the company’s CFO.

“This growth highlights Nvidia’s increasing exposure to powering ADAS, autonomous vehicles, and robotics through its DRIVE platform and related technologies,” Brady Wang, semiconductor analyst at Counterpoint Research, said in an email.

CEO Jensen Huang said in Nvidia’s earnings call the company expects that “every single one” of the 1 billion cars on the roads today “will be robotic cars” that collect data which Nvidia-supported AI systems can help refine, according to a FactSet transcript.

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Automotive and robotics is “getting ready to take off,” likely due to investments in autonomous vehicles such as Waymo and Tesla, Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said in an email. Munster also estimated that around 15 companies are building humanoid robots, potentially increasing demand for Nvidia chips.

“The performance of that segment is an important story below the fold that’s not getting much attention because it’s small,” he added, “but they can be a much bigger part of revenue going forward.”

Autos and robotics unit currently accounts for 1.45% of Nvidia’s total revenue.

Counterpoint’s Wang expects this growth to continue with Nvidia’s “increasing adoption of L2+ and more advanced systems”.

Several Chinese electric car companies, including BYD, Nio and Zeekr, use Nvidia’s driver-assist chip systems.

“In addition to autonomous driving, I also anticipate that robotics and physical AI will experience a hype,” Wang added, “followed by real-world applications in the coming years, sustaining the long-term growth of this sector.”