Nvidia reported that sales more than tripled in its latest quarter, and it gave an outlook that pointed to a growing frenzy for the chips that underpin the artificial-intelligence boom.
Revenue rose to $26 billion for the quarter, the company said, a record amount. Net profit was $14.88 billion, up from $2 billion a year before.
The sales and profit were ahead of Wall Street estimates in a FactSet survey. The company’s outlook of around $28 billion in sales for its current fiscal quarter was also higher than anticipated — although they are set to only double as the company faces a tougher comparison with quarters after the AI boom began.
Nvidia’s stock rose 4.4% in after-hours trading, a record high. Nvidia’s shares have more than tripled in the last 12 months, sending its valuation above $2 trillion. The company said Wednesday that it will split its stock 10-for-1, effective June 7.
Nvidia’s sales turned sharply upward about a year ago, after OpenAI’s ChatGPT wowed users with its ability to generate humanlike text. OpenAI used thousands of Nvidia’s AI chips to create ChatGPT, analysts say, and there are few alternatives for the computation-intensive job of creating and deploying such systems.
Following OpenAI’s runaway success, big tech companies and AI startups scrambled to buy up as many of Nvidia’s chips as they could, leading to a shortage of them that company executives expect to persist through this year and into next year.
Write to Asa Fitch at asa.fitch@wsj.com