Nvidia profit soars on demand for AI chips

SANTA CLARA

Nvidia Corp., which has seen its value skyrocket over the past year thanks to soaring demand for its graphics chips used for artificial intelligence, posted stronger-than-expected results for the latest quarter, with its revenue more than tripling from a year earlier.

Nvidia’s revenue for its fiscal fourth quarter was $22.1 billion, up from $6.05 billion.

The company based in Santa Clara, California, earned $12.29 billion, compared to a profit of $1.41 billion a year ago.

The company's specialized chips are key components that help power different forms of artificial intelligence, including the latest generative AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Google's Gemini.

Nvidia carved out an early lead in the hardware and software needed to tailor its technology to AI applications, partly because founder and CEO Jensen Huang began to nudge the company into what was then seen as a still half-baked technology more than a decade ago.

Huang looked at ways that Nvidia chipsets known as graphics processing units might be tweaked for AI-related applications to expand beyond their early inroads in video gaming.

Nvidia relies heavily on the world's biggest maker of computer chips, the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, to churn out the chips that Nvidia designs.

Taiwan’s Taiex benchmark index last week jumped 3% to a record high, buoyed by a surge in TSMC's share price.

The leap came after Morgan Stanley analysts raised their price target on Nvidia's stock to $750 from $603, citing an increase in demand for AI chips.