UNITED STATES

SECURITIES AND EXCHANGE COMMISSION

Washington, D.C. 20549

Indicate by check mark whether the registrant is a large accelerated filer, an accelerated filer, a non-accelerated filer, a smaller reporting company, or an emerging growth company. See definitions of “large accelerated filer”, “accelerated filer”, “smaller reporting company”, and "emerging growth company" in Rule 12b-2 of the Exchange Act.

The aggregate market value of the voting stock held by non-affiliates of the registrant as of July 26, 201924, 2020 was approximately $102.15$241.21 billion (based on the closing sales price of the registrant's common stock as reported by the Nasdaq Global Select Market on July 26, 2019)24, 2020). This calculation excludes 2625 million shares held by directors and executive officers of the registrant. This calculation does not exclude shares held by such organizations whose ownership exceeds 5% of the registrant's outstanding common stock that have represented to the registrant that they are registered investment advisers or investment companies registered under section 8 of the Investment Company Act of 1940.

The number of shares of common stock outstanding as of February 14, 202019, 2021 was 612620 million.

WHERE YOU CAN FIND MORE INFORMATION

Investors and others should note that we announce material financial information to our investors using our investor relations website, press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts. We also use the following social media channels as a means of disclosing information about the company, our products, our planned financial and other announcements and attendance at upcoming investor and industry conferences, and other matters and for complying with our disclosure obligations under Regulation FD:

NVIDIA Twitter Account (https://twitter.com/nvidia)

NVIDIA Company Blog (http://blogs.nvidia.com)

NVIDIA Facebook Page (https://www.facebook.com/nvidia)

NVIDIA LinkedIn Page (http://www.linkedin.com/company/nvidia)

NVIDIA Instagram Page (https://www.instagram.com/nvidia)

In addition, investors and others can view NVIDIA videos on YouTube.YouTube (https://www.YouTube.com/nvidia).

The information we post through these social media channels may be deemed material. Accordingly, investors should monitor these accounts and the blog, in addition to following our press releases, SEC filings and public conference calls and webcasts. This list may be updated from time to time. The information we post through these channels is not a part of this Annual Report on Form 10-K. These channels may be updated from time to time on NVIDIA's investor relations website.

Forward-Looking Statements

This Annual Report on Form 10-K contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, which are subject to the “safe harbor” created by those sections. Forward-looking statements are based on our management's beliefs and assumptions and on information currently available to our management. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terms such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “goal,” “would,” “expect,” “plan,” “anticipate,” “believe,” “estimate,” “project,” “predict,” “potential” and similar expressions intended to identify forward-looking statements. These statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which may cause our actual results, performance, time frames or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance, time frames or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. We discuss many of these risks, uncertainties and other factors in this Annual Report on Form 10-K in greater detail under the heading “Risk Factors.” Given these risks, uncertainties and other factors, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Also, these forward-looking statements represent our estimates and assumptions only as of the date of this filing. You should read this Annual Report on Form 10-K completely and with the understanding that our actual future results may be materially different from what we expect. We hereby qualify our forward-looking statements by these cautionary statements. Except as required by law, we assume no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

All references to “NVIDIA,” “we,” “us,” “our” or the “Company” mean NVIDIA Corporation and its subsidiaries.

In addition, statements that “we believe” and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information available to us as of the filing date of this Annual Report on Form 10-K , and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely upon these statements.

© 20202021 NVIDIA Corporation. All rights reserved. NVIDIA, the NVIDIA logo, GeForce, Quadro, Tegra, Tesla, CUDA, CUDA-X AI, GeForce, GeForce Experience, GeForce GTX, GeForce NOW, GeForce RTX, G-SYNC, Jetson, Mellanox, NGC, NVIDIA Clara,AGX, NVIDIA DesignWorks, NVIDIA DGX, NVIDIA DGX SUPERPOD, NVIDIA DRIVE, NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation, NVIDIA GameWorks, NVIDIA GRID, NVIDIA Omniverse,HGX, NVIDIA RTX, NVIDIA VRWorks, NVLink, NVSwitch,Quadro, Quadro RTX, SHIELD, vGPU and TensorRTXavier are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Other company and product names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated. Features, pricing, availability, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

PART I

ITEM 1. BUSINESS

Our Company

NVIDIA pioneered accelerated computing to help solve the most challenging computational problems. Starting with aSince our original focus on PC graphics, we extended our focus in recent yearshave expanded to the revolutionary field of artificial intelligence, or AI.several other large and important computationally intensive fields. Fueled by the sustained demand for exceptional 3D graphics and the scale of the gaming market, NVIDIA has leveraged its GPU architecture to create platforms for scientific computing, artificial intelligence, or AI, data science, autonomous vehicles, or AV, robotics, and augmented and virtual reality, or VR, high performance computing, or HPC,AR and AI.VR.

The GPU was initially used to simulate human imagination, enabling the virtual worlds of video games and films. Today, it also simulates human intelligence, enabling a deeper understanding of the physical world. Its parallel processing capabilities, supported by up to thousands of computing cores, are essential to running deep learning algorithms. This form of AI, in which software writes itself by learning from data, can serve as the brain of computers, robots and self-driving cars that can perceive and understand the world. GPU-powered deep learning continues to beis being adopted by thousands of enterprises to deliver services and featuresproducts that would have been impossible with traditional coding.

NVIDIA has a platform strategy, bringing together hardware, system software, programmable algorithms, libraries, systems, and services to create unique value for the markets we serve. While the requirements of these end markets are diverse, we address them with a unified underlying architecture leveraging our GPUs and software stacks. The programmable nature of our architecture allows us to support several multi-billion-dollar end markets with the same underlying technology by using a variety of software stacks developed either internally or by third party developers and partners. The large and growing number of developers across our platforms strengthens our ecosystem and increases the value of our platform to our customers.

Innovation is at our core. We have invested over $20$24 billion in research and development since our inception, yielding inventions that are essential to modern computing. Our invention of the GPU in 1999 defined modern computer graphics and established NVIDIA as the leader in visual computing. With our introduction of the CUDA programming model in 2006, we opened the parallel processing capabilities of the GPU for general purpose computing. This approach significantly accelerates the performance of the most demanding high-performance computing, or HPC, applications in HPC in fields such as aerospace, bio-science research, mechanical and fluid simulations, and energy exploration. Today, our GPUs power many of the fastest supercomputers across the world. In addition, the massively parallel compute architecture of our GPUs and associated software are well suited for deep learning and machine learning, powering the era of AI. While traditional CPU-based approaches no longer deliver advances on the pace described by Moore’s Law, we deliver GPU performance improvements on a pace ahead of Moore’s Law, giving the industry a path forward.

Gamers choose NVIDIA GPUs to enjoy immersive, increasingly cinematic virtual worlds. GPUs also help underpin the world’s fastest growing spectator sport, eSports, which attracts hundreds of millions of viewers to watch top-quality gaming. A rapidlyIn addition to serving the growing genrenumber of Battle Royale games, suchgamers, the market for gaming GPUs is expanding as Fortnite, is also expandinga result of the gaming market.burgeoning population of live streamers, broadcasters, artists and creators.

Researchers use our GPUs to accelerate a wide range of important applications, from simulating molecular dynamics to weather forecasting. With support for more than over 600 applications - including the top 15 HPC applications - NVIDIA GPUs enable some of the most promising areas of discovery, from weather prediction to materials science and from wind tunnel simulation to genomics. NVIDIA GPUs power the top two supercomputers in the world, located at Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories in the United States as well asand Europe. Including GPUs and networking, NVIDIA powers nearly 70%, and 8 of the top 10, supercomputers in Europe and Japan. In all, NVIDIA powers 136 ofon the global TOP500 supercomputers.list.

The world’s leading cloud service providers and consumer internet companies use our GPUs to enable, accelerate or enrich the services they deliver to billions of end-users, including search, social networking, online shopping, live video, translation, AI assistants, navigation, and cloud computing.

A rapidly growing number of enterprises and startups across a broad range of industries use our GPUs for deep learning that meets, and in several cases surpasses, human perception, in fields ranging from radiologyAI software to precision agriculture.bring automation to the products and services they build. For example, the transportation industry is turning to our GPUsplatforms for AV; the healthcare industry is leveraging them for enhanced medical imaging and AI to enable autonomous vehicles, or AVs, with several hundred companiesaccelerated drug discovery; and organizations working with NVIDIA’s DRIVE platform.the financial services industry is using them for fraud detection.

Professional designers use our GPUs to create visual effects in movies and design products ranging from soft drink bottles to commercial aircraft.

Headquartered in Santa Clara, California, NVIDIA was incorporated in California in April 1993 and reincorporated in Delaware in April 1998.

Our Businesses

Our two reportable segments - GPUGraphics segment includes GeForce GPUs for gaming and Tegra Processor - are based on a single underlying architecture. Our GPU product brands are aimed at specialized markets includingPCs, the GeForce NOW game streaming service and related infrastructure, and solutions for gamers; Quadrogaming platforms; Quadro/NVIDIA RTX GPUs for designers; Tesla and DGX for AI data scientists and big data researchers; and GRIDenterprise workstation graphics; vGPU software for cloud-based visual computing users. and virtual computing; and automotive platforms for infotainment systems.

Our Tegra brand integrates an entire computer onto a single chip,Compute & Networking segment includes Data Center platforms and incorporates GPUssystems for AI, HPC, and multi-core CPUs to drive supercomputingaccelerated computing; Mellanox networking and interconnect solutions; automotive AI Cockpit, autonomous driving development agreements, and autonomous vehicle solutions; and Jetson for autonomous robots, drones,robotics and cars, as well as for game consoles and mobile gaming and entertainment devices.

Our Markets

We specialize in markets in which GPU-based visual computing and acceleratedour computing platforms can provide tremendous throughputacceleration for applications. These platforms incorporate processors, systemsinterconnects, software, programmable algorithms, systems, and services to deliver value that is unique in the marketplace. From our proprietary processors, we createdOur platforms that address four large markets where our expertise is critical: Gaming, Professional Visualization, Data Center, and Automotive.

Gaming

Computer gaming is the largest entertainment industry. Many factors propel computer gaming’s growth, including new high production value games and franchises, the continued rise of competitive online gaming or eSports, social connectivity and the rise of virtualdemand for more content from game streamers, modders and augmented reality.creators.

Our gaming platforms leverage our GPUs and sophisticated software to enhance the gaming experience by improving the visualwith smoother, higher quality of graphics, increasing the frame rate for smoother gameplay and improving realism by incorporating the behavior of light and physical objects. These can be enjoyed independently or together to extend the gaming experience across platforms.

We developed NVIDIA RTX bringing next generation graphics and AI to games. The NVIDIA RTX line-up features ray tracing technology to enablefor real-time, cinematic-quality rendering in the RTX line-up of our gaming platforms.rendering. Ray tracing, which has long been used for special effects in the movie industry, is a computationally intensive technique that simulates the physical behavior of light to achieve greater realism in computer-generated scenes. NVIDIA RTX also features deep learning super sampling, or DLSS, our AI technology that boosts frame rates while generating beautiful, sharp images for games.

Our products for the gaming market include GeForce RTX and GeForce GTX GPUs for PC gaming, SHIELD devices for gaming and streaming, GeForce NOW for cloud-based gaming, as well as platforms and development services for specialized console gaming devices.

Professional Visualization

We serve the Professional Visualization market by working closely with independent software vendors to optimize their offerings for NVIDIA GPUs. Our GPU computing solutions enhance productivity and introduce new capabilities for critical parts of the workflow for such major industries as automotive, media and entertainment, architectural engineering, oil and gas, and medical imaging.

Designers who build the products we use every day need the images that they view digitally to mirror reality. This requires simulating the physical behavior of light and materials, or physically-based rendering, an emerging trend in professional design.rendering. Our DesignWorks software delivers this to designers and enables an architect designing a building with a computer-aided design package to interact with the model in real time, view it in greater detail, and generate photorealistic renderings for the client. It also allows an automotive designer to create a highly realistic 3D image of a car, which can be viewed from all angles, reducing reliance on costly, time-consuming full-scale clay models.

The NVIDIA RTX platform makingmakes it possible to render film-quality, photorealistic objects and environments with physically accurate shadows, reflections and refractions using ray tracing in real-time. Through fiscal year 2020, manyMany leading 3D design and content creation applications developed by our ecosystem partners enablednow support for RTX, allowing professionals to accelerate and transform their workflows with NVIDIA RTX GPUs.

Just as VR is becoming more important in gaming, it is also being incorporated in a growing number of enterprise applications, including within medicine, architecture, product design, and retail.applications. Virtual car showrooms, surgical training, architectural walkthroughs, and bringing historical scenes to life all deploy this technology, powered by our GPUs.

The NVIDIA accelerated computing platform addressesis focused on accelerating the most compute-intensive workloads, such as AI, data analytics, graphics and HPC applications.scientific computing, across hyperscale, cloud, enterprise, public sector, and edge data centers. The platform consists of our energy efficient GPUs, interconnects and systems, our CUDA programming language, specificmodel, and a growing body of software libraries, such as cuDNNSoftware Development Kits, or SDKs, application frameworks and TensorRT, and innovations such as NVLink and NVSwitch interconnects, which enable application scalability across multiple GPUs.services.

In the field of AI, NVIDIA’s platform accelerates both deep learning and machine learning workloads. Deep learning is a computer science approach where neural networks are trained to recognize patterns from massive amounts of data in the form of images, sounds and text - in some instances better than humans. Machine learning is a related approach that leverages algorithms as well as data to learn how to make determinations or predictions, often used in data science. HPC, also referred to as scientific computing, uses numerical computational approaches to solve large and complex problems. For both AI and HPC applications, the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform greatly increases the performance and power efficiency of high-performance computers and data centers, as GPUs excel at parallel workloads.centers.

We are engaged with thousands of organizations working on AI in a multitude of industries, from automating tasks such as reading medical images, to enabling fraud detection in financial services, to optimizing oil exploration and drilling. These organizations include the world’s leading consumer internet and cloud services companies, which are using AI for critical tasks such as Amazon, Baidu,natural language processing and Facebook, which are infusing AI in applications that enable highly accurate voice recognition and real-time translation;recommendation systems; enterprises that are increasingly turning to AI to improve products and services; and startups seeking to implement AI in transformative ways across multiple industries. We partnered with industry leaders such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and VMware to bring AI to enterprise users. We also have partnerships in transportation, retail, healthcare and manufacturing, among others, to accelerate the adoption of AI.

To enable deep learning and machine learning, we provide a familyAt the foundation of the NVIDIA accelerated computing platform are our GPUs, designed to speed upwhich excel at parallel workloads such as the training and inferencing of neural networks. They are available in industry standard servers from every major computer maker worldwide, including Cisco, Dell, HP, Inspur, and Lenovo; from every major cloud service provider such as Alicloud, Amazon Web Services, Baidu Cloud, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, and Oracle Cloud; as well as in our DGX AI supercomputer, a purpose-built system for deep learning and GPU accelerated applications. To facilitate customer adoption, we have also built other ready-to-use systems and reference designs around our GPUs, including

In fiscal year 2021, we completed the acquisition of Mellanox Technologies, Ltd., or Mellanox, a supplier of high-performance interconnect and networking products that are now part of our Data Center market platform. Mellanox interconnects are included in our DGX, delivers performance equalHGX and EGX platforms and continue to hundredsbe available on a standalone basis. With Mellanox, we can optimize across the entire computing, networking, and storage stack to deliver data center-scale computing solutions. For example, we announced a new class of conventional servers, comes fully integratedprocessor – the data processing unit, or DPU – supported by a novel data-center-infrastructure-on-a-chip architecture, or DOCA, that enables breakthrough networking, storage and security performance.

While our approach starts with hardware,powerful chips, what makes it a computing platform is our large body of software, developmentincluding the CUDA parallel programming model, the CUDA-X collection of application acceleration libraries, Application Programming Interfaces, or APIs, SDKs and tools, support for AI frameworks, and runs popular accelerated applications.domain-specific application frameworks. We also offer the NVIDIA GPU Cloud registry, or NGC, a comprehensive catalog of easy-to-use, optimized

We also serve the data center market with GRIDNVIDIA virtual GPU (vGPU) software products that enable powerful GPU performance for virtualizedworkloads ranging from graphics-rich virtual desktops and workstations to data science and AI. Installed on a physical GPU in a cloud or enterprise data center server, NVIDIA vGPU software creates virtual GPUs that can be shared across multiple virtual machines accessed on any device, anywhere. With companies supporting more offsite workers than ever before, NVIDIA vGPU software products are enabling remote access to professional graphics and Virtual Compute Serveraccelerated computing for virtualized AIdata scientists, researchers, designers, engineers, and data science. GRID makes it possible to run graphics-intensive applications remotely on a server in the data center. Applications include accelerating virtual desktop infrastructures and delivering graphics-intensive applications from the cloud forcreative professionals across industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, healthcare,architecture, and educational institutions, among others. Virtual Compute Server (vComputeServer) enables data centers to accelerate server virtualization with GPUs so that the most compute-intensive workloads, such as artificial intelligence, deep learning,media and data science, can be run in a virtual machine.entertainment.

Automotive

NVIDIA’s Automotive market is comprised of cockpit infotainment solutions, AV platforms, and associated development agreements. Leveraging our technology leadership in AI and building on our long-standing automotive relationships, we are delivering a fullcomplete end-to-end solution for the AV market under the DRIVE brand. NVIDIA has demonstrated multiple applications of AI within the car.car: AI can drive the car itself as a pilot in either partial or fully autonomous mode. AImode or it can also be a co-pilot, assisting the human driver inwhile creating a safer driving experience.

NVIDIA is working with several hundred partners in the automotive ecosystem including automakers, truck makers, tier-one suppliers, sensor manufacturers, automotive research institutions, HD mapping companies, and startups to develop and deploy AI systems for self-driving vehicles. Our unified AI computing architecture starts with training deep neural networks using our GPUs, and then running thema full perception, planning and control stack within the vehicle on the NVIDIA DRIVE computing platform. The in-vehicle platform consists of the high-performance, energy efficient hardware - DRIVE AGX computing hardware, and open, modular software, - including DRIVE AV for autonomous driving and DRIVE IX for in-vehicle intelligent experience and AI assistance. In addition, we offer a scalable simulation solution, NVIDIA DRIVE Constellation, for testing and validating a self-driving platform before commercial deployment. This end-to-end, software-defined approach allows cars to receive over-the-air updates to add new features and capabilities throughout the life of a vehicle.assistants.

NVIDIA DRIVE can perceive and understand in real-time what'swhat is happening around the vehicle, precisely locate itself on an HD map, and plan a safe path forward. This advanced self-driving car platform combines deep learning, sensor fusion, and surround vision to change the driving experience. Our DRIVE platform scales from a palm-sized, energy-efficient module for automated highway-driving capabilities to a configuration with multiple systems aimed at enabling driverless cars. Our Xavier system-on-a-chip, or SoC, which started shipping in 2018, enables vehicles to use deep neural networks to process data from multiple cameras and sensors. It powers the DRIVE AutoPilot, NVIDIA’s Level 2+ automated driving solution, combining the DRIVE AV self-driving solution with the DRIVE IX cockpit software, including a visualization system for allowing the driver to see what the car sees and plans to do. In fiscal year 2020, we announced our next-generation SoC, Orin, targeting mass production in 2022.Orin.

Business Strategies

NVIDIA’s key strategies that shape our overall business approach include:

Sales and Marketing

Our sales strategy involves working with end customers and various industry ecosystems through our partner network. Our worldwide sales and marketing strategy is key to achieving our objective of providing markets with our high-performance and efficient GPU and embedded system-on-a-chip, or SOC,computing platforms. Our sales and marketing teams, located across our global markets, work closely with end customers in each industry.and various industry ecosystems through our partner network. Our partner network

incorporates each industry's respective OEMs, original device manufacturers, or ODMs, system builders, add-in board manufacturers, or AIBs, retailers/distributors, internet and cloud service providers, automotive manufacturers and tier-1 automotive suppliers, mapping companies, start-ups, and other ecosystem participants.

Members of our sales team have technical expertise and product and industry knowledge. We also employ a team of application engineers to assist our partner network in designing, testing, and qualifying system designs that incorporate our platforms. We believe that the depth and quality of our design support are key to improving our partner network’s time-to-market, maintaining a high level of customer satisfaction, and fostering relationships that encourage our end customers and partner network to use the next generation of our products within each platform.

To encourage the development of applications optimized for our GPUs,platforms, we seek to establish and maintain strong relationships in the software development community. Engineering and marketing personnel engage with key software developers to promote and discuss our platforms, as well as to ascertain individual product requirements and solve technical problems.

As NVIDIA’s business has evolved from a focus primarily on gaming products to broader markets, and from chips to platforms and complete systems, so, too, have our avenues to market. Thus, in addition to sales to customers in our partner network, certain of our platforms are also sold through e-tail channels, or direct to cloud service providers and enterprise customers.

Our GPU and Tegra processorcomputing platforms serve manya diverse set of markets from consumer PC gaming tosuch as enterprise workstations to government and cloud service provider data centers, although a majority of our revenue stems from the consumer industry.gaming, professional workstations, and automotive. Our consumer products typically see stronger revenue in the second half of our fiscal year. In addition, based on the production schedules of key customers, some of our products for notebooks orand game consoles typically generate stronger revenue in the second and third quarters, and weaker revenue in the fourth and first quarters. However, there can be no assurance that this trend will continue.

Manufacturing

We do not directly manufacture semiconductors used for our products. Instead, we utilize a fabless manufacturing strategy, whereby we employ world-class suppliers for all phases of the manufacturing process, including wafer fabrication, assembly, testing, and packaging. This strategy uses the expertise of industry-leading suppliers that are certified by the International Organization for Standardization in such areas as fabrication, assembly, quality control and assurance, reliability, and testing. Additionally, we can avoid many of the significant costs and risks associated with owning and operating manufacturing operations. While we may directly procure certain raw materials used in the production of our products, such as substrates and a variety of components, our suppliers are responsible for procurement of the majoritymost of the raw materials used in the production of our products. As a result, we can focus our resources on product design, additional quality assurance, marketing, and customer support.

We utilize industry-leading suppliers, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd, to produce our semiconductor wafers. We then utilize independent subcontractors, such as Advanced Semiconductor Engineering, Inc., Amkor Technology, BYD Auto Co. Ltd., Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., Ltd., JSI Logistics Ltd., King Yuan Electronics Co., Ltd., Omni Logistics, LLC and Siliconware Precision Industries Company Ltd. to perform assembly, testing, and packaging of most of our products and platforms. We use contract manufacturers such as Flex Ltd. to manufacture our standard and custom adapter card products and switch systems, and Fabrinet to manufacture our cables. We purchase substrates from IbidenCo.Ibiden Co. Ltd., Kinsus Interconnect Technology Corporation, and Unimicron Technology Corporation, and memory from Micron Technology, Samsung Semiconductor, Inc., and SK Hynix.

We typically receive semiconductor products from our subcontractors, perform incoming quality assurance and configuration, and then ship the semiconductors to contract equipment manufacturers, or CEMs, distributors, motherboard and AIBadd-in card, or AIC, customers from our third-party warehouse in Hong Kong.Kong, Israel, and the United States. Generally, these manufacturers assemble and test the boards based on our design kit and test specifications, and then ship our products to retailers, system builders, or OEMs as motherboard and AIBAIC solutions.

We also utilize industry-leading contract manufacturers, or CMs, such as BYDFlex Ltd. and Hon Hai Precision Industry Co.,Fabrinet, and ODMs such as Quanta Computer and Wistron Corporation, to manufacture some of our products for sale directly to end customers. In those cases, key

elements such as the GPU, SoC, memory, and memoryintegrated circuit are often consigned by us to the CMs, who are responsible for the procurement of other components used in the production process.

Competition

The market for our products is intensely competitive and is characterized by rapid technological change and evolving industry standards. We believe that the principal competitive factors in this market are performance, breadth of product offerings, access to customers and partners and distribution channels, software support, conformity to industry standard APIs, manufacturing capabilities, processor pricing, and total system costs. We believe that our ability to remain competitive will depend on how well we are able to anticipate the features and functions that customers and partners will demand and whether we are able to deliver consistent volumes of our products at acceptable levels of quality and at competitive prices. We expect competition to increase from both existing competitors and new market entrants with products that may be lower priced than ours, or may provide better performance or additional features not provided by our products. In addition, it is possible that new competitors or alliances among competitors could emerge and acquire significant market share.

A significant source of competition comes from companies that provide or intend to provide GPUs, including Intel’s recent announcement that they will introduce high performance GPUs, embedded SOCs, and other accelerated, and AI computing processor products.products, and providers of semiconductor-based high-performance interconnect products based on InfiniBand, Ethernet, Fibre Channel and proprietary technologies. Some of our competitors may have greater marketing, financial, distribution and manufacturing resources than we do and may be more able to adapt to customer or technological changes. We expect an increasingly competitive environment in our fiscal year 2022.

Our current competitors include:

Patents and Proprietary Rights

We rely primarily on a combination of patents, trademarks, trade secrets, employee and third-party nondisclosure agreements, and licensing arrangements to protect our intellectual property in the United States and internationally. Our currently issued patents have expiration dates from March 20202021 to October 2039.June 2045. We have numerous patents issued, allowed, and pending in the United States and in foreign jurisdictions. Our patents and pending patent applications primarily relate to our products and the technology used in connection with our products. We also rely on international treaties, organizations, and foreign laws to protect our intellectual property. The laws of certain foreign countries in which our products are or may be manufactured or sold, including various countries in Asia, may not protect our products or intellectual property rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. This decreased protection makes the possibility of piracy of our technology and products more likely. We continuously assess whether and where to seek formal protection for particular innovations and technologies based on such factors as:

We have also licensed technology from third parties and expect to continue to enter into such license agreements.

We believe that our employees are our greatest assets, and they play a key role in creating long-term value for our stakeholders. As of January 26, 2020,31, 2021, we had 13,77518,975 employees 9,823 of whomin 29 countries. 13,532 were engaged in research and development and 3,952 of whom5,443 were engaged in sales, marketing, operations, and administrative positions.

To date,support employee advancement, we provide training on-the-job through coaching, feedback, and role modeling. We have not incurred significanta rich library of live and on-demand learning experiences such as workshops, panel discussions, speaker-based forums, and internally focused technical conferences. We curate learning libraries around our most common development needs, provide the latest technical platforms to support self-paced learning, and regularly listen to learner feedback through internal messaging channels to improve and update those topics. We offer tuition reimbursement programs and subsidize advanced technical education programs and online technical certifications. We encourage internal mobility through career expos and coaching, as well as foster mentorship connections and provide trained coaches as additional developmental support. Our strong partnerships with internal community resource groups allow us to personalize programs to address specific career development needs.

We support our people and their families in making their health a top priority. We implemented global protocols to slow the spread of COVID-19 and to keep our workforce safe by closing our offices around the world in March 2020 for all except essential workers. We also eliminated most business travel. We provided our employees with resources to work remotely and continued to pay all employees and contractors. For essential labs and offices that remain open, we instituted appropriate safety protocols and social distancing guidelines. Additionally, we provided resources for employees, including work from home support, enhanced health coverage, reimbursement for certain work from home expenses, relatedand learning and development resources on how to environmental regulatory compliance matters.lead and manage remotely.

Information About Our Executive Officers

Available Information

ITEM 1A. RISK FACTORS

In evaluating NVIDIA and our business, the following factors should be considered in addition to the other information in this Annual Report on Form 10-K. Before you buy our common stock, you should know that making such an investment involves risks including, but not limited to, the risks described below. Any one of the following risks could harm our business, financial condition, results of operations or reputation, which could cause our stock price to decline, and you may lose all or a part of your investment. 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.

Risks Related to Our Business, Industry and PartnersMarkets

If we fail to meet the evolving needs of our markets, or to identify new products, services or technologies, our revenue and financial results may be adversely impacted.

We createdOur GPU-based visual and accelerated computing platforms that address four large markets: Gaming, Professional Visualization, Data Center, and Automotive. These markets often experience rapid technological change, changes in customer requirements, new product introductions and enhancements, and evolving industry standards. Our success depends on our ability to identify emerging industry changes and to develop new (or enhance our existing) products, services and technologies that meet the evolving needs of these markets. Such activities may require considerable technical, financial, compliance, sales and marketing investments. We devote significant resources to the development of technologies and business offerings in markets where we have a limited operating history, such as the automotive and data center markets, which presents additional risks to our business. For example, we must continue to accurately forecast demand, scale and optimize utilization in our data center business, and develop and deliver next-generation autonomous driving solutions to our partners and customers or our business could be negatively impacted. We also must continue to scale our networking business following the Mellanox acquisition by leveraging our joint product capabilities and continuing to effectively integrate company processes. We must also continue to develop the infrastructure needed to scale our business in these areas, including customer service and support.support, e-commerce and intellectual property, or IP, licensing capabilities. If we do not continue to evolve our business, including by developing

market specific technologies, managing the social and environmental impact of our products and technologies, expanding the ecosystem for our current and future products and technologies, and monetizing and expanding our business in various areas, our financial results could be negatively impacted. We also must meet customer safety and compliance standards, which are subject to change.change, including those applicable to our automotive solutions and systems. Additionally, we continue to make considerable investments in research and development, which may not produce significant revenue for several years, if at all. If our investments are unsuccessful and we fail to develop new products, services and technologies, or if we focus on technologies that do not become widely adopted, our business, revenue, financial condition and results of operations could be adversely affected. We cannot assure you that our strategic direction will result in innovative products and technologies that provide value to our customers, partners, and ultimately, our shareholders. If we fail to anticipate the changing needs of our target markets and emerging technology trends, or if we do not appropriately adapt that strategyour strategies as market conditions evolve, in a timely manner to exploit potential market opportunities, our business will be harmed.

Competition in our current and target markets could prevent us from growing our revenue.

Our target markets remain extremely competitive, and we expect competition to intensify as current competitors expand their product and/or service offerings, industry standards continue to evolve, customer needs change and new competitors enter these markets. Our competitors’ products, services and technologies may be less costly, or may offer superior functionality or better features, than ours, which may result, among other things, in lower than expected selling prices for our products. In addition, some of our competitors operate and maintain their own fabrication facilities, have longer operating histories, larger customer bases, more comprehensive intellectual property, or IP portfolios and patent protections, and greater financial, sales, marketing and distribution resources than we do. These competitors may be able to more effectively identify and capitalize upon opportunities in new markets and end user customer trends, quickly transition their products, including semiconductor products, to increasingly smaller line width geometries, and obtain sufficient foundry capacity and packaging materials, which could harm our business. In our networking business, some of our customers are also integrated circuit and switch suppliers and already have in-house expertise and internal development capabilities similar to ours. Licensing our technology and supporting such customers entails the transfer of intellectual property rights that may enable such customers to develop their own products and solutions to replace those we are currently providing to them. Consequently, these customers may become competitors to us. Further, each new design by a customer presents a competitive situation. If we are unable to successfully compete in our target markets, respond to changes in our target markets or introduce new offerings to meet the needs of this competitive environment, including in significant international markets such as China, demand for our products, services and technologies could decrease, which would cause our revenue to decline and cause our results of operations to suffer. In addition, the competitive landscape in our target markets has changed and may continue to evolve due to a trend toward consolidation, which could lead to fewer customers, partners, or suppliers, any of which could negatively affect our financial results.

System securityRisks Related to Our Supply and data protection breaches, as well as cyber-attacks, could disrupt our operations, reduce our expected revenue and increase our expenses, which could adversely affect our stock price and damage our reputation.

We depend on third parties and their technology to manufacture, assemble, test and/or package our products, which reduces our control over product quantity and quality, manufacturing yields, development, enhancement and product delivery schedule and could harm our business.

We do not manufacture the silicon wafers used for our GPUs and Tegra processorsproducts and do not own or operate a wafer fabrication facility. Instead, we are dependent on industry-leading foundries, such as Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited and Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., to manufacture our semiconductor wafers using their fabrication equipment and techniques. Similarly, we do not directly assemble, test or package our products, but instead rely on independent subcontractors. We doIn the past we have not had and going forward we may not have long-term commitment contracts with these foundries or subcontractors. Nevertheless, we may enter into long-term procurement and capacity commitments

as our business grows or in periods with limited availability of capacity and components in our supply chain. As our business grows, we must continue to scale and adapt our supply chain or it could have an adverse impact on our business. As a result, we face several significant risks which could have an adverse effect on our ability to meet customer demand, scale our supply chain and/or negatively impact our business operations, gross margin, revenue and/or financial results, including:

In addition, low manufacturing yields could have an adverse effect on our ability to meet customer demand, increase manufacturing costs, harm customer or partner relationships, and/or negatively impact our business operations, gross margin, revenue and/or financial results. Manufacturing yields for our products are a function of product design, which is developed largely by us, and process technology, which typically is proprietary to the foundry. Low yields may result from either product design or process technology failure. We do not know whether a yield problem will exist until our design is actually manufactured by the foundry. As a result, yield problems may not be identified until well into the manufacturing process and require us and the foundry to cooperate to resolve the problem.

We also rely on third-party software development tools to assist us in the design, simulation and verification of new products or product enhancements, and to bring such new products and enhancements to market in a timely manner. In the past, we have experienced delays in the introduction of products and enhancements as a result of the inability of then available

Our products, including both hardware and software offerings, are complex and may contain defects or security vulnerabilities, or experience failures or unsatisfactory performance due to any number of issues in design, fabrication, packaging, materials and/or use within a system. These risks may increase as our products are introduced into new devices, markets, technologies and applications, including into the automotive market, or as new versions are released. Some errors in our products or services may only be discovered after a product or service has been shipped or used by customers or the end users of such product. Undiscovered vulnerabilities in our products or services could expose our customers or end users to hackers or other unscrupulous third parties who develop and deploy viruses, worms and other malicious software programs that could attack our products or services. Failure of our products to perform to specifications, or other product defects, could lead to substantial damage to the products we sell directly to customers, the end product in which our device has been integrated by OEMs, ODMs, AIBs and Tier 1 automotive suppliers, and to the user of such end product. Any such defect may cause us to incur significant warranty, support and repair or replacement costs, write offwrite-off the value of related inventory, cause us to lose market share, and divert the attention of our engineering personnel from our product development efforts to find and correct the issue. In addition, an error or defect in new products or releases or related software drivers after commencement of commercial shipments could result in

failure to achieve market acceptance or loss of design wins, harm our relationships with customers and partners and harm consumers’ perceptions of our brand. Also, we may be required to reimburse our customers, partners or consumers, including costs to repair or replace products in the field. A product recall, including automotive recalls or a recallrecalls due to a bug in our products, or a significant number of product returns could be expensive, damage our reputation, harm our ability to attract new customers, result in the shifting of business to our competitors and result in litigation against us, such as product liability suits. If a product liability claim is brought against us, the cost of defending the claim could be significant and would divert the efforts of our technical and management personnel, and harm our business. Further, our business liability insurance may be inadequate or future coverage may be unavailable on acceptable terms, which could adversely impact our financial results.

Business disruptions could harm our business, leadRisks Related to a decline in revenues and increase our costs.

If we fail to estimate customer demand properly, our financial results could be harmed.

We manufacture our GPUs and Tegra processorsOur products are manufactured based on estimates of customercustomers’ future demand and requirements.our manufacturing lead times are very long. This could lead to a significant mismatch between supply and demand, giving rise to product shortages or excess inventory, and make our demand forecast more uncertain. We sell many of our products through a channel model, and our channel customers sell to retailers, distributors, and/or end customers. As a result, the decisions made by our channel partners, retailers, and distributors in response to changing market conditions and the changing demand for our products could impact our financial results. In order to have shorter shipment lead times and quicker delivery schedules for our customers, we may build inventoriesinventory for anticipated periods of growth which do not occur, may build inventory anticipating demand that does not materialize, or may build inventory to serve what we believe is pent-up demand. Such decisionsIn periods with limited availability of capacity and components in our supply chain, we may place non-cancellable inventory orders significantly in advance of our normal lead times, pay premiums or provide deposits to secure normal and have resultedincremental future supply, which could negatively impact our financial results. Demand for our products is based on many factors, including our product introductions and transitions, competitor announcements, and competing technologies, all of which can impact the timing and amount of our revenue. For example, our GPUs for gaming are capable of digital currency mining. Demand and use of GPUs for cryptocurrency has fluctuated in prolonged channel sell-through,the past and is likely to continue to change quickly. Volatility in the cryptocurrency market, including changes in the prices of cryptocurrencies, can impact demand for our products and our ability to estimate demand for our products. Changes to cryptocurrency standards and processes including, but not limited to, the pending Ethereum 2.0 standard may also create increased aftermarket resales of our GPUs and may reduce demand for our new GPUs. Additionally, consumer behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as we experienced withincreased demand for our mid-range gaming GPUsGaming, Data Center and mobile workstation and laptop products and suppressed corporate demand for desktop workstations, has made it more difficult for us to estimate future demand, and these challenges may be more pronounced in fiscal year 2019.the future if and when the effects of the pandemic subside. In estimating demand, we make multiple assumptions, any of which may prove to be incorrect. If we are unable to accurately anticipate demand for our products, our business and financial results could be adversely impacted. Situations that may result in excess or obsolete inventory include:

The cancellation or deferral of customer purchase orders could result in our holding excess inventory, which could adversely affect our gross margins. In addition, because we often sell a substantial portion of our products in the last month of each quarter, we may not be able to reduce our inventory purchase commitments in a timely manner in response to customer cancellations or deferrals. We could be required to write-down our inventory to the lower of cost or marketnet realizable value or write-off excess inventory, and we could experience a reduction in average selling prices if we incorrectly forecast product demand, any of which could harm our financial results.

Conversely, if we underestimate our customers' 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 customers' orders on a timely basis. We may also face supply constraints caused by natural disasters or other events. In such cases, even if we are able to increase production levels to meet customer demand, we may not be able to do so in a cost-effective or timely manner. If we 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 damaged.

We receive a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of customers within our partner network and our revenue could be adversely affected if we lose or are prevented from selling to any of these customers.

We receive a significant amount of our revenue from a limited number of customers within our distribution and partner network. With several of these distributors and partners, we are selling multiple target market platforms through their channels. For fiscal year 2020, 11% of our total revenue was from one customer, Dell. Our operating results in the foreseeable

We could also be restricted from selling our products or providing our technology and services due to U.S. trade restrictions. The loss of any of our large customers, a significant reduction in purchases by them, or our inability to sell to a customer due to U.S. trade restrictions would likely harm our financial condition and results of operations, and any difficulties in collecting accounts receivable could harm our operating results and financial condition.

We maintain an allowance for doubtful accounts for estimated losses resulting from the inability of certain of our customers to make required payments and obtain credit insurance over the purchasing credit extended to these customers. In the future, we may have to record additional provisions or write-offs and/or defer revenue on certain sales transactions, which could negatively impact our financial results, and we may not be able to acquire credit insurance on the credit we extend to these customers or in amounts that we deem sufficient.

We are subject to risks and uncertainties associated with international operations, including adverse economic conditions, which may harm our business.

We conduct our business worldwide and we have offices in various countries outside of the United States. Our semiconductor wafers are manufactured, assembled, tested and packaged by third parties located outside of the United States. We also generate a significant portion of our revenue from sales outside the United States. We allocate revenue

to individual countries based on the location to which the products are initially billed even if our customers’ revenue is attributable to end customers that are located in a different location. Revenue from sales outside of the United States accounted for 92%81% of total revenue for fiscal year 2021, 92% for fiscal year 2020 and 87% for each of fiscal years 2019 and 2018.year 2019. Revenue from billings to China, including Hong Kong, was 25%23% of our revenue for fiscal year 2020, even if our customers' revenue is attributable to end customers that are located in a different location.2021. Additionally, as of January 26, 2020,31, 2021, approximately 46%53% of our employees were located outside of the United States. The global nature of our business subjects us to a number of risks and uncertainties, which could have a material adverse effect on our business, financial condition and results of operations, including:

If our sales outside of the United States are delayed or cancelled because of any of the above factors, our revenue may be negatively impacted.

To be competitive and execute our business strategy successfully, we must attract, retain and motivate our executives and key employees. The market for highly skilled workers and leaders in our industry is extremely competitive. In particular, hiring qualified executives, scientists, engineers, technical staff and research and development personnel is critical to our business. We also must recruit and develop diverse talent. Additionally, changes in immigration and work permit laws and regulations or the administration or interpretation of such laws or regulations could impair our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees. If we are less successful

WeOur operating results have in the past acquired and invested in,fluctuated and may in the future fluctuate, and if our operating results are below the expectations of securities analysts or investors, our stock price could decline.

Our operating results have in the past fluctuated and may in the future continue to acquire and investfluctuate due to numerous factors. Therefore, investors should not rely on quarterly comparisons of our results of operations as an indication of our future performance.

Additional factors, other than or in other businesses that offer products, services and technologies that we believe will help expand or enhance our existing products, strategic objectives and business. In March 2019, we announced our agreementaddition to acquire Mellanox for approximately $6.9 billion. The Mellanox acquisition and other past or future 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 growth or our financial results. Given that our resources are limited, our decision to pursue a transaction has opportunity costs; accordingly, if we pursue a particular transaction, we may need to forgo the prospect of entering into other transactionsthose described elsewhere in these risk factors, that could help us achieveaffect our strategic objectives. Additional risks related toresults of operations in the Mellanox acquisition, and other acquisitions or strategic investmentsfuture include, but are not limited to:

Any one or more of the factors discussed above could prevent us from achieving our expected future financial results. Any such failure to consummate a proposed acquisition or other strategic investment;

Risks Related to Regulatory, Legal, Our Common Stock and Other Matters

Actions to adequately protect our IP rights could result in substantial costs to us and our ability to compete could be harmed if we are unsuccessful in doing so or if we are prohibited from making or selling our products.

We have in the past, currently are, and may in the future become involved in lawsuits or other legal proceedings alleging patent infringement or other intellectual property rights violations by us, our employees or parties that we have agreed to indemnify for certain claims of infringement. An unfavorable ruling in any such intellectual property related litigation could include significant damages, invalidation of a patent or family of patents, indemnification of customers, payment of lost profits, or, when it has been sought, injunctive relief. Claims that our products or processes infringe the IP rights of others, regardless of their merit, could cause us to incur significant costs to respond to, defend, and resolve such claims, and they may also divert the efforts and attention of management and technical personnel.

We may commence litigation or other legal proceedings in order to protect our intellectual property rights. Such proceedings may increase our operating expenses, which could negatively impact our operating results. Further, we could be subject to countersuits as a result of our initiation of litigation. If infringement claims are made against us or our products are found to infringe a third party’s patent or intellectual property, we or one of our indemnitees may have to seek a license to the third party’s patent or other intellectual property rights. However, we may not be able to obtain licenses at all or on terms acceptable to us particularly from our competitors. If we or one of our indemnitees is unable to obtain a license from

Our success depends in part on protecting our intellectual property. To accomplish this, we rely primarily on a combination of patents, trademarks, trade secrets, employee and third-party nondisclosure agreements, licensing arrangements, and the laws of the countries in which we operate to protect our intellectual property in the United States and internationally. We may be required to spend significant resources to monitor and protect our intellectual property rights, and even with significant expenditures we may not be able to protect our intellectual property rights that are valuable to our business. The laws of certain foreign countries may not protect our products or intellectual property rights to the same extent as the laws of the United States. This makes the possibility of piracy of our technology and products more likely. In addition, the theft or unauthorized use or publication of our trade secrets and other confidential business information could harm our competitive position and reduce acceptance of our products; as a result, the value of our investment in research and development, product development, and marketing could be reduced. We also may face risks to our intellectual property if our employees are hired by potential competitors. We continuously assess whether and where to seek formal protection for existing and new innovations and technologies, but cannot be certain whether our applications for such protections will be approved, and, if approved, whether we will be able to enforce such protections.

Privacy concerns relating to our products and services could damage our reputation, deter current and potential users from using our products and services, result in liability, or result in legal or regulatory proceedings.

Our products and services may provide us with access to sensitive, confidential or personal data or information that is subject to privacy and security laws and regulations. Concerns about our practices or the ultimate use of our products and services with regard to the collection, use, retention, security or disclosure of personal information or other privacy-related matters, including for use in AI, even if unfounded, could damage our reputation and adversely affect our operating results. The theft, loss, or misuse of personal data collected, used, stored, or transferred by us to run our business or by one of our partners could result in significantly increased security costs, damage to our reputation, regulatory proceedings, disruption of our business activities or increased costs related to defending legal claims.

Worldwide regulatory authorities are considering and have approved various legislative proposals concerning data protection, which continue to evolve and apply to our business. For example, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, which requiresrequired companies to meet new requirements effective as of May 2018 regarding the handling of personal data, including its use, protection and the ability of persons whose data is stored to access, correct orand delete such data about themselves. Failure to meet GDPR requirements could result in penalties of up to 4% of worldwide revenue. In addition, California adopted the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018, or CCPA, which took effect on January 1, 2020. The CCPA gives California residents the right to access, delete and opt-out of certain sharing of their personal information, and to receive detailed information about how it is used and shared. Violations of the CCPA carry substantial civil penalties and the law creates a private right of action for certain data breaches, which is expected to increase data breach litigation. California’s privacy laws will expand substantially effective January 1, 2023 as a result of California voters approving the California Privacy Rights Act of 2020, or CPRA, in the November 2020 election. The CPRA will, among other things, restrict use of certain categories of sensitive personal information; further restrict the use of cross-contextual advertising techniques; establish restrictions on the retention of personal information; expand the types of data breaches subject to the private right of action; and establish the California Privacy Protection Agency to implement and enforce the new law, as well as impose administrative fines. Since the enactment of the CCPA, more than half of the states in the United States and the United States Congress have considered proposed privacy legislation, reflecting a trend toward more stringent privacy legislation in the United States.

The interpretation and application of consumer and data protection laws in the United States, Europe and elsewhere are often uncertain and fluid, and may be interpreted and applied in a manner that is inconsistent with our data practices. If so, we may be ordered to change our data practices and/or be fined. Complying with these changing laws has caused, and could continue to cause, us to incur substantial costs, which could have an adverse effect on our business and results of operations. Further, failure to comply with existing or new rules may result in significant penalties or orders to stop the alleged noncompliant activity.

We may have exposure to additional tax liabilities and our operating results may be adversely impacted by higher than expected tax rates.

As a multinational corporation, we are subject to income taxes as well as non-income based taxes, such as payroll, sales, use, value-added, net worth, property and goods and services taxes, in both the United States and various foreign jurisdictions. Our domestic and international tax liabilities are subject to the allocation of revenue and expenses in different jurisdictions. Significant judgment is required in determining our worldwide provision for income taxes and other tax liabilities. We are regularly under audit by tax authorities in different jurisdictions. For example, we are currently under examination by the Internal Revenue Service for our fiscal years 2018 and 2019 and under audit in the United Kingdom, Germany, Israel and India. Although we believe our tax estimates are reasonable, tax authorities may

disagree with certain positions we have taken, and any adverse outcome of such a review or audit could increase our worldwide effective tax rate, increase the amount of non-income taxes imposed on our business, and harm our financial position, results of operations, and cash flows. Further, changes in United States federal, and state or international tax laws applicable to multinational corporations or other fundamental law changes may materially impact our tax expense and cash flows, as we experienced in fiscal year 2018 with the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, or TCJA.

Our future effective tax rate may be affected by such factors as changes in tax laws, changes in our business or statutory rates, changes in jurisdictions in which our profits are determined to be earned and taxed, changes in available tax credits, the resolution of issues arising from tax audits, changes in United States generally accepted accounting principles, adjustments to income taxes upon finalization of tax returns, increases in expenses not deductible for tax purposes, changes in the valuation of our deferred tax assets and liabilities and in deferred tax valuation allowances, changing interpretation of existing laws or regulations, the impact of accounting for stock-based compensation and the recognition of excess tax benefits and tax deficiencies within the income tax provision in the period in which they occur, the impact of accounting for business combinations, shifts in the amount of earnings in the United States compared with other regions in the world and overall levels of income before tax, changes in ourthe domestic or international organization of our business and structure, as well as the expiration of statute of limitations and settlements of audits. Any changes in our effective tax rate may reduce our net income.

Our business is exposed to the risks associated with litigation, investigations and regulatory proceedings.

We currently and may in the future face legal, administrative and regulatory proceedings, claims, demands and/or investigations involving shareholder, consumer, competition and/or other issues relating to our business on a global basis. For example, multiple securities litigation claims have recently been filed against uswe are currently defending ourselves in a shareholder lawsuit claiming that we and certain of our officers based on the dissemination of allegedlymade false andand/or misleading statements related to channel inventory and the impact of cryptocurrency mining on GPU demand.demand in 2017 and 2018. In addition, a stockholder,multiple stockholders, purporting to act on our behalf, of the Company, filed a derivative lawsuitlawsuits seeking to assert claims on our behalf of the Company against the members of our board of directors and certain officers based on the dissemination of allegedly false and misleading statements related to channel inventory and the impact of cryptocurrency mining on GPU demand.

Litigation and regulatory proceedings are inherently uncertain, and adverse rulings could occur, including monetary damages, or an injunction stopping us from manufacturing or selling certain products, engaging in certain business practices, or requiring other remedies, such as compulsory licensing of patents. An unfavorable outcome or settlement may result in a material adverse impact on our business, results of operations, financial position, and overall trends. In addition, regardless of the outcome, litigation can be costly, time-consuming, and disruptive to our operations.

In addition, the laws and regulations our business is subject to are complex and change frequently. We may be required to incur significant expense to comply with changes in, or remedy violations of, these laws and regulations.

Delaware law and provisions in our certificate of incorporation, our bylaws and our agreement with Microsoft Corporation could delay or prevent a change in control.

Our status as a Delaware corporation and the anti-takeover provisions of the Delaware General Corporation Law may discourage, delay, or prevent a change in control by prohibiting us from engaging in a business combination with an interested shareholder for a period of three years after the person becomes an interested shareholder, even if a change of control would be beneficial to our existing shareholders. In addition, our certificate of incorporation and bylaws contain provisions that could make it more difficult for a third party to acquire a majority of our outstanding voting stock. These provisions include the following:

On March 5, 2000, we entered into an agreement with Microsoft in which we agreed to develop and sell graphics chips and to license certain technology to Microsoft and its licensees for use in the Xbox. Under the agreement, if an individual or corporation makes an offer to purchase shares equal to or greater than 30% of the outstanding shares of our common stock, Microsoft may have first and last rights of refusal to purchase the stock. The Microsoft provision and the other factors listed above could also delay or prevent a change in control of NVIDIA. These provisions could also discourage proxy contests and make it more difficult for shareholders to elect directors of their choosing and to cause us to take other corporate actions they desire.

ITEM 1B. UNRESOLVED STAFF COMMENTS

Not applicable.

ITEM 2. PROPERTIES

Outside of Santa Clara, California, we lease facilities in a number of regional facilities in other U.S. locations that are used as research and development centers and/or sales and administrative offices. Outside of the United States, we own a building in Hyderabad, India, that is being used primarily as a research and development center. We also lease facilities in various international locations that are used as research and development centers and/or sales and administrative offices. These leased facilities are located primarily in Asia, Europe, and Europe.Israel. In addition, we also lease data center space in various locations around the world.

We believe that we currently have sufficient facilities to conduct our operations for the next twelve months. We do not identify or allocate assets by operating segment. For additional information regarding obligations under leases, refer to Note 3 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K, which information is hereby incorporated by reference.

ITEM 3. LEGAL PROCEEDINGS

Please see Note 13 of the Notes to the Consolidated Financial Statements in Part IV, Item 15 of this Annual Report on Form 10-K for a discussion of our legal proceedings.

ITEM 4. MINE SAFETY DISCLOSURES

Not Applicable.

PART II

ITEM 5. MARKET FOR REGISTRANT’S COMMON EQUITY, RELATED STOCKHOLDER MATTERS AND ISSUER PURCHASES OF EQUITY SECURITIES

Issuer Purchases of Equity Securities

Beginning August 2004, our Board of Directors authorized us to repurchase our stock.

Since the inception of our share repurchase program, we have repurchased an aggregate of 260 million shares for a total cost of $7.08 billion through January 26, 2020.31, 2021. All shares delivered from these repurchases have been placed into treasury stock.

The repurchases can be made in the open market, in privately negotiated transactions, or in structured share repurchase programs, and can be made in one or more larger repurchases, in compliance with Rule 10b-18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, subject to market conditions, applicable legal requirements, and other factors. The program does not obligate NVIDIA to acquire any particular amount of common stock and the program may be suspended at any time at our discretion.

In November 2018, we communicated our intent to return $3.00 billion to shareholders by the end of fiscal year 2020, including $700 million in share repurchases made during the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2019. In fiscal year 2020,2021, we returned $390paid $395 million in quarterly cash dividends. As of January 31, 2021, we are authorized, subject to certain specifications, to repurchase shares of our common stock up to $7.24 billion through December 2022. We did not repurchase any shares during fiscal year 2020. We intend to return to repurchasing shares after closing the acquisition of Mellanox.2021.

Restricted Stock Unit Share Withholding

Stock Performance Graphs 

The following graph compares the cumulative total shareholder return for our common stock, the S&P 500 Index, and the Nasdaq 100 Index for the five years ended January 26, 2020.31, 2021. The graph assumes that $100 was invested on January 25, 201531, 2016 in our common stock and in each of the S&P 500 Index and the Nasdaq 100 Index. Our common stock is a component of each of the presented indices. Total return assumes reinvestment of dividends in each of the indices indicated. Total return is based on historical results and is not intended to indicate future performance.

*$100 invested on 1/25/1531/16 in stock and in indices, including reinvestment of dividends.