Nvidia Breaks Records With $44 Billion Sales Despite China Ban

Pivot 5
May 29, 2025

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Nvidia Smashes Quarterly Record With $44 Billion Sales Despite China Ban

Nvidia posted fiscal first-quarter revenue of $44.06 billion, a 69% jump that pushed the share price up more than 5% after hours. The quarter remained strong even after U.S. export rules blocked $2.5 billion of H20 chip shipments to China.
Data-center revenue soared 73% to $39.1 billion and gaming sales reached $3.76 billion, 33% above analyst expectations. The company forecast $45 billion in July-quarter revenue, plus or minus 2%, while flagging an $8 billion hit from ongoing China restrictions.
Nvidia’s valuation has risen to $3.3 trillion, making it the world’s second most valuable public company behind Microsoft. CEO Jensen Huang warned that excluding the firm from a market with half of the world’s AI researchers could ultimately strengthen Chinese chip makers.

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Mark Zuckerberg told shareholders that Meta's AI assistant now serves one billion monthly active users across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and the stand-alone Meta AI app. The milestone follows the April launch of the dedicated app.
Zuckerberg said the company is prioritizing personalization, voice conversations and entertainment to deepen engagement before turning to revenue. Monetization options under consideration include inserting paid recommendations or offering a subscription that grants access to more compute.
Despite the billion-user count, Zuckerberg said the assistant is not yet 'at scale' by Meta's standards. Shareholder proposals opposed by the board, including ending the dual-class structure, appear set to fail, leaving Zuckerberg’s voting control and product roadmap intact.

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Salesforce announces an $8 billion acquisition of Informatica. The move merges two established software providers to fortify Salesforce’s foundation for agentic AI.
Informatica brings a data catalog, integration, governance, quality, privacy and master data management toolkit that complements Salesforce’s Data Cloud, Agentforce, Tableau and MuleSoft portfolio. Analysts say the purchase closes Salesforce’s data-management gap and matches the scale of prior buys like Slack at $28 billion and Tableau at $16 billion.
Experts quoted in the article state the combined stack creates a unified architecture that allows AI agents to operate safely and at enterprise scale. They add that Salesforce now possesses the ingredients for a real-time customer data fabric giving enterprises seamless access to customer information inside and outside Salesforce.

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GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says Copilot now serves 15 million developers and is widening its role from code generation to reviews and security fixes. Speaking on the AI & I podcast, he describes embedding the agent directly into GitHub Actions and VS Code to meet developers in their existing workflows.
Dohmke notes Copilot’s scale dwarfs emerging rivals Cursor and Windsurf, each with around one million users. He adds that GitHub has shipped more than 100 Copilot updates in 2025 and lets developers choose among models such as Claude, Gemini, and DeepSeek.
Dohmke likens Copilot’s rivalry with Cursor and Windsurf to the Windows-Mac and iPhone-Android duopolies, arguing mature markets center on two or three players. By logging every agent action for traceability, GitHub positions Copilot as accountable as a human teammate.

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Outsourcing homework to chatbots has become routine, leaving professors unable to distinguish human work from machine output. Some faculty now rely on AI to grade those same AI-generated papers.
The fault is with universities for vague AI policies who need clear rules that spell out acceptable use and penalties for misuse. Honor codes, in-class pencil-and-paper tests, and oral exams are proven tools to curb cheating.
An education built on AI shortcuts erodes the humanities’ goal of fostering critical thinking and civic awareness. Parents are paying tens of thousands of dollars for degrees that risk becoming empty credentials.

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