Finance
Nvidia’s auto segment revenue surges to record high on demand for driver-assist tech
Signage at the Nvidia Corp. offices in Taipei, Taiwan, on Tuesday, Jan. 28, 2025. Photographer: An Rong Xu/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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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.
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.”
Market volatility appears to be boosting demand for two types of exchange-traded funds: leveraged and inverse.
And, Direxion CEO and ETF money manager Douglas Yones thinks market conditions will keep fueling demand for them.
“We have a lot of securities in the market that are … up a lot over the last five or 10 years. Market seemingly has been going sideways. We saw Friday’s correction,” he told CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week. “There are people out there that are saying: ‘Hey, maybe I don’t want to be fully invested,’ but also don’t want to take the capital gain on selling a position. What can I do? I can take a long position in a short ETF and inverse ETF. I can basically neutralize my exposure.”
Leveraged and inverse ETFs give investors the opportunity to make monster bets on the stock market’s direction. Investors can go long or short.
Yones’ firm is heavily involved in the space. Yones runs the Direxion Daily Semiconductor Bull 3X Shares (SOXL), which is one of the largest leveraged/inverse ETFs. According to FactSet, Broadcom, Nvidia and Qualcomm are among the ETF’s top holdings.
As of Wednesday’s market close, Yones’ ETF is up almost 84% over the past two years, but off 36% over the past year. It’s also down more than 16% over the past week.
“There are market-moving headlines happening two to three times a day. And so, the volatility is growing up, not down,” said Yones. “We think that holds for the whole year.”
VettaFi’s Todd Rosenbluth also sees growing demand for single-stock leveraged ETFs.
“Single-stock leveraged ETFs probably sound hard to wrap your head around. But it’s one stock you get the risk-on or in case of inverse risk-off exposure to that and the liquidity benefits of the ETF wrapper,” the firm’s head of research said.
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.
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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.
Market volatility creating buzz for these two types of ETFs
Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: NVDA, SNOW, CRM, EBAY
401(k) balances hit second highest on record: Fidelity
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