Nvidia doubles revenue to $96 bn, forecasts $108 bn in AI-driven sales
Nvidia, the world's most valuable publicly traded company, on Wednesday reported quarterly revenue of $96.2 billion for the three months ending July 26—more than double the same period last year. The figure surpassed Wall Street's estimate of roughly $92 billion, and the company forecast even stronger sales in the current quarter.
Revenue rose 106 per cent from a year earlier and 18 per cent from the previous three months. Net profit reached $59.7 billion, up 126 per cent year-on-year, though the result included $7.8 billion in gains from Nvidia's portfolio of stakes in other AI companies.
Nvidia is the leading producer of graphics processing units (GPUs) used to train and run large artificial intelligence models, making its earnings a widely watched gauge of corporate investment in AI. Its biggest customers—Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet and Meta—are expected to spend roughly $800 billion on data centers and AI infrastructure this year, nearly double last year's total. Analysts project industry-wide spending could top $1 trillion.
For the current quarter, Nvidia expects revenue of about $108 billion, ahead of analyst forecasts. It also projected revenue growth of about 70 per cent in the next fiscal year, which begins in January. The company said sales were constrained by supply limitations rather than any shortage of demand.
"The AI infrastructure buildout is at full steam," said Jensen Huang, Nvidia's chief executive, in a statement.
As Nvidia's financial strength has grown, it has increasingly invested in AI startups, many of which are also its customers. This has drawn attention to what some critics describe as "circular financing," in which Nvidia's investments help those companies buy its products. Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress addressed the issue on an earnings call.
"We recognize the scale of this support, and we know some will call this circular financing. We see it differently," Kress said. "We're going through a major computing platform shift, the creation of one of the most important technologies in human history, and these are once-in-a-generation companies."
Huang added: "The only regret that I have is that I didn't invest more and sooner."
In China, Nvidia again projected no revenue from sales of AI computing chips in its forecast. Beijing has only recently begun allowing limited quantities of Nvidia's H200 processors into the country, with ByteDance and Tencent reportedly receiving around 10,000 units each in recent weeks—a fraction of what U.S. export licenses permit.
Shares of Nvidia rose nearly five per cent in after-hours trading following the announcement. Despite the jump, the company's stock has trailed other chipmakers in recent months, and its growth is modest compared with the sharp rally in 2023 that followed the launch of ChatGPT. Nvidia remains ahead of Apple as the world's most valuable publicly traded company.
