Nvidia said Wednesday that its quarterly net profit soared sevenfold from a year earlier, driven by demand for chips to power artificial intelligence in data centers.
The California-based company reported net income of $14.9 billion, on sales of $26 billion, nearly quadrupling from the same period last year.
Nvidia also announced that it will implement a 10-for-1 stock split on June 7 to facilitate stock ownership. Nvidia stock rose nearly 6% to $1,003.50 in post-market trading.
“The next industrial revolution has begun,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said during the earnings call.
“Businesses and countries are partnering with NVIDIA to transition trillions of dollars of traditional data centers to accelerated computing and build a new type of data center — AI factories — to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence.”
According to Huang, there was strong demand for advanced GPUs (graphics processing units) customized for the requirements of training AI models.
A promising sign, Huang said, is that interest in generative AI is expanding beyond cloud computing giants to consumer internet, automotive and healthcare companies, and even countries looking to build independent AI. He said there was.
“NVIDIA is once again defying gravity as AI companies around the world continue to rely on its chips, networking hardware and software ecosystem,” said Jacob Born, senior analyst at Emarketer.
“We can expect NVIDIA's bolder, more innovative efforts to help it maintain its position in the industry for the foreseeable future.”
Huang said he expects demand for Nvidia chips to outstrip supply for some time to come.
Huang said Nvidia chips are being developed as fast as they can be made, and “we're racing every day.”
～Clouds Spread Over Europe～
U.S. tech giant Amazon said on Wednesday that its cloud computing unit AWS will invest 15.7 billion euros ($17 billion) to expand its data centers in the Spanish region of Aragon by 2033.
The move follows an announcement this month that it would invest €7.8 billion to build a cloud center in Germany and €1.2 billion to develop cloud and logistics infrastructure for its courier service in France.
Huang described Nvidia's chips as central to transforming data centers into “AI-generating factories,” with data being the “raw material” that will be turned into experiences like videos that are automatically generated using OpenAI's new Sora tool.
The company said its “Sovereign AI” system is driving demand for Nvidia chips outside the United States.
Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress described sovereign AI as the ability for nations to create and control their own artificial intelligence.
Huang said sovereign AI infrastructure is being built in Canada, France, Japan and many other countries.
Mr. Kress said the Chinese market is a rare weakness for Nvidia, and revenue there has declined after the U.S. tightened export controls last October.
The launch of the tool ChatGPT, which debuted in November 2022, has led to increased calls to further close supply chains after the world discovered the power of AI.
“Our business in China has declined significantly from historical levels,” Huang said on the earnings conference call.
“And because of the limitations of our technology, we are now much more competitive in China.”
The company said NVIDIA has reconfigured its products to comply with U.S. export regulations regarding chip technology.
U.S. export control restrictions targeting other markets, including China, Vietnam and parts of the Middle East, are expected to continue to hurt sales of Nvidia's data center chips in those markets.
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