Trade research, fighting fraud among top Nvidia AI uses

Chipmaking giant Nvidia is seeing high demand for its AI tools within the financial services industry. 

Nvidia is seeing a “sharp jump” in its AI services as companies in all sectors across the globe continue to adopt and deploy AI, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said during the company’s first-quarter earnings call today.

“The pace and scale of AI factory deployments are accelerating with nearly 100 Nvidia-powered AI factories in flight this quarter, a twofold increase year over year, with the average number of GPUs powering each factory also doubling in the same period,” Kress said. 

The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s AI is used by banks in:  

• Code generation; 

• Risk management, including credit score testing and stress testing; 

• Intelligent automation, including document summarization and workflow automation; 

• Personalization; 

• Call center representatives and chatbots; 

• KYC/AML/fraud detection; and 

• Alpha generation tool, which helps in trade research and portfolio construction. 

Nvidia’s alpha generation and fraud detection services were adopted widely in 2024, Malcolm deMayo, global vice president of financial services, said during Amazon Web Services’ Financial Services Symposium in New York this month. 

Alpha generation has helped investment bankers to build reports, conduct research and execute trades, deMayo said. 

He said these companies have reduced fraud and/or grown due to Nvidia’s tech: 

• Derivative trading company Jane Street doubled its revenue to $20 billion in 2024, partly due to using Nvidia’s GPUs for accelerated research and trade execution; 

• Payments giant company American Express deployed Nvidia’s fraud fighting solution and has reduced false positives by 6%. 

• Digital European bank bunq reduced false positives by 2.5 times. 

“The challenge we have is we have 1,500 milliseconds to approve a transaction to reduce losses and give a good consumer experience,” deMayo said. “So, any time we think about introducing new technology, we have to be mindful of we cannot add latency.” 

While many banks were hesitant to adopt AI tech initially, they are experimenting with it and deploying it in certain cases, he said. 

“I think banks are pretty good at adopting technology,” deMayo said, adding that tech providers should approach banks with a “well-designed, well-defined methodology for bringing in new technology and starting with a ‘do no harm’ ideology.” 

Q1 earnings 

In Q1, Nvidia reported: 

• Data center revenue of $39.1 billion, up 73% YoY; 

• Revenue of $44.1 billion, up 69% YoY; and 

• Net income of $18.8 billion, up 26% YoY. 

The U.S. government on April 9 issued new export controls on H20, Nvidia’s data center GPU designed specifically for the Chinese market, Kress said. During the quarter, the company took a $4.5 billion charge to write down inventory and purchase obligations tied to orders received before the controls. 

“The $50 billion market in China for AI chips is effectively closed to U.S. industry,” Chief Executive Jensen Huang said during the earnings call. 

The company expects to take an $8 billion hit in the second quarter if current export restrictions remain in place, Kress said.