Highlights of the week: record Nvidia revenue, a new round of Revolut, and IBM's worst day ever

Nvidia reported a 73% jump in quarterly revenue thanks to demand for data center chips and gave a forecast above market expectations. Revolut is preparing a new round of funding and expects a valuation in excess of $100 billion before a possible IPO. Stripe is considering buying PayPal, while Netflix gave up the fight for Warner Bros. Discovery - it ended up being bought by Paramount Skydance for $110 billion . About the main events from February 23 to 27 - in our review.

Nvidia reported a 73% year-over-year increase in revenue for the fourth quarter of 2025 to $68.13 billion, beating market expectations thanks to a 75% surge in data center chip sales. For the full year, revenue exceeded $200 billion for the first time, net income nearly doubled to $43 billion, and gross margin reached 75%.

The forecast for the current quarter was also significantly above the Wall Street consensus. Nvidia said it has enough supply inventory to meet future demand, trying to allay fears of a bubble in AI investment, Bloomberg noted.

After the publication, Nvidia shares briefly rose on the post-market, but then went into negative territory. The company also said it did not include possible shipments to China in the forecast, despite having obtained a license that will allow it to ship limited volumes of H200 chips to customers in China. The chipmaker is preparing to release a new generation of Vera Rubin chips that will deliver a tenfold increase in performance per watt and improve energy efficiency under tight data center power constraints.

What else is there to read about it?

- How Wall Street reacted to the Nvidia report - in the material "Unusual seems ordinary": why Wall Street did not enthusiastically accept the Nvidia report".

- Cult investor Michael Burry saw risks behind Nvidia's record earnings. What made him wary - in the article "The $117 billion trap: What risk the "Downgrade Game" investor found in Nvidia's report".

Oil Mark Brent in trading on February 27 at the moment rose by more than 3.8% to $73.5 per barrel, WTI - was in the plus by 3.6%, its value rose to $67.55 per barrel. Prior to that, Brent and WTI crude traded at such levels in July and August 2025, noted Reuters.

Markets reacted with gains to talks between the US and Iran in Geneva - after US President Donald Trump ordered a military buildup in the Middle East. As a result, the two sides failed to reach an agreement and agreed to continue consultations, with another meeting to be held in Vienna next week, said Omani Foreign Minister Badr al-Busaidi, who is mediating. Analysts warn of the risks of a military clash in the region if there is no meaningful breakthrough in the talks.

Europe's most valuable fintech startup Revolut is considering a new share sale in the second half of the year ahead of a potential IPO, Bloomberg reported, citing sources. Revolut investors are pushing for a new round, which could value the company at least $100 billion. The deal, as before, could include raising new capital and selling stakes to existing shareholders, but there are no final decisions on timing and volume yet.

When going public, the company expects a valuation of at least $150 bln, Bloomberg sources say. Last year, after a series of financing deals, Revolut's valuation rose to $75 bln versus $45 bln in 2024, with demand outstripping supply. The digital bank, founded in 2015, is expanding aggressively: in January, Revolut launched a full-fledged bank in Mexico - the first outside Europe - and applied for a banking license in Peru.

Netflix did not go ahead with its bid to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. The streaming company said that at the price it would have taken to outbid Paramount's last offer of $31 per share, the deal would have become uneconomic. The next day, Feb. 27, Paramount Skydance signed a deal to buy Warner Bros. for $110 billion, Reuters reported, citing an audio recording of a WBD staff meeting.

Paramount Skydance has paid Neftlix a penalty of $2.8 billion, Bloomberg wrote, citing sources. Shares of Paramount at the end of trading on February 27 rose by almost 21%, Netflix - by 13.75%. Quotes WBD decreased by 2%. Netflix offered $82.7 billion including debt for the studio and streaming business Warner Bros., but Paramount's counteroffers for the entire company for several months kept the auction open.

Non-public payment platform Stripe has expressed interest in acquiring PayPal Holdings or some of the company's assets, Bloomberg has learned. Discussions are at an early stage, and there is no guarantee that they will end in a deal. Representatives for both companies declined to comment. In the five days since Friday, PayPal shares have risen 5 percent - after Bloomberg first reported buyer interest in the company, which is struggling because of a lag in modernizing payment technology and is trying to regain ground amid competition from Apple Pay and Google Pay.

Stripe, founded in 2010 by brothers Patrick and John Collison, is one of the strongest players in the market thanks to its user-friendly APIs for online payments. Its clients include Amazon and Google. This week, Stripe said its valuation reached $159 billion as part of a share buyback from employees.

What else is there to read about Stripe?

- Stripe is one of the most valuable private companies in the world. A few years ago, its co-founder Patrick Collison wrote a letter with advice on how to succeed. Oninvest translated and published it in full - "Patrick Collison created the fintech giant Stripe. What advice would he give to himself as a young man?".

IBM shares on Monday, February 23 suffered their biggest one-day plunge since 2000. Investors feared for the company's earnings after the announcement of Anthropic's Claude Code AI tool - which can automate the modernization of COBOL, a key language for IBM's mainframe computers. By the end of the Feb. 23 session, IBM's forward P/E (price-to-earnings) ratio had fallen to 17.82, its lowest level since August 2024, Barron's noted.

However, the next day the securities partially recovered. Analysts from Jefferies, Evercore, Melius Research and Wedbush called the sell-off excessive and emphasized that IBM's position remains stable and the risks are rather short-term. Most experts maintain a "buy" or "hold" recommendation on the stock, pointing to the strong customer base and the competitive advantages of mainframes, despite increased AI competition.

Rating agency Moody's said that gaps in US GAAP accounting standards allow the largest technology companies to fail to disclose tens of billions of dollars of potential liabilities related to data center leases. The agency assessed that current rules make it possible to disregard the cost of lease renewals or lease cancellation compensation unless such payments are deemed "reasonably likely." As a result, reporting may not reflect the full picture of future cash outflows, Moody's warned.

Companies use special project structures (SPVs) financed by third-party investors: hyperscalers lease data centers from them, and the obligations under such contracts are effectively equivalent to debt. Moody's cites Meta's project in Louisiana as an example: the company has leased it for an initial term of four years with an option to extend to 20 years, with the company guaranteeing up to $28 billion in unrecorded debt. Moody's has said it will independently adjust the debt valuation in assigning ratings if it believes the disclosed liabilities understate the real risks.

The developer of Claude's AI model, Anthropic, has reported large-scale attacks from Chinese "AI tigers" - startups that could become national leaders in generative AI. Anthropic estimates that they made more than 16 million requests to Claude through nearly 24,000 accounts, using proxies to bypass restrictions. It's a so-called distillation attack, a technique in which a less powerful model is trained on the responses of a more advanced system to replicate its capabilities at a lower cost.

DeepSeek, Moonshot AI and MiniMax are named among the companies. DeepSeek, Anthropic claims, collected examples of logical reasoning and answers to sensitive topics to customize its own model, while Moonshot AI and MiniMax focused on AI agent development and programming. Anthropic has beefed up its defenses and implemented systems to detect such patterns. Meanwhile, DeepSeek is preparing to release its V4 model, which according to media reports is already performing well, and the previous release of R1 earlier triggered a sell-off in AI companies' shares.

What else is there to read about it?

- Chinese AI startup DeepSeek has closed access to the pre-release version of its new V4 model to U.S. chip makers, allowing only Chinese companies. Why this may change the balance of power in the market - in the article "DeepSeek hid the pre-release of its powerful new AI model from Nvidia and AMD - Reuters".

- U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth demanded that Anthropic provide the military with full access to the company's model by Friday evening. Investor Evgeny Marchenko discussed why this is a new phase in the relationship between the government and the AI industry in his column "A new era of 'military' AI: How the Pentagon and Anthropic conflict will change the stock market".

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor