Nvidia profits soar over 600% on AI demand, shares top $1,000

Nvidia said Wednesday its quarterly net profit rocketed by seven times year-on-year on demand for its chips to power artificial intelligence in data centers.

The California-based company reported a net profit of $14.9 billion, while its revenue of $26 billion was almost four times what it took in during the same fiscal quarter last year.

Nvidia also announced a 10-for-one stock split effective June 7 to make owning shares more accessible. Nvidia shares were up nearly six percent to $1,003.50 in after-market trades.

"The next industrial revolution has begun," Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in an earnings release.

"Companies and countries are partnering with NVIDIA to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centers to accelerated computing and build a new type of data center -- AI factories -- to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence."

Demand was strong for sophisticated GPUs (graphics processing units) tailored for the demands of training AI models, according to Huang.

In a promising sign, interest in generative AI is expanding beyond cloud computing titans to consumer internet, automotive, and healthcare companies as well as nations seeking to build sovereign AI, Huang said.

"Nvidia defies gravity again as AI companies globally continue to depend on its chips, networking hardware, and its software ecosystem," said Emarketer senior analyst Jacob Bourne.

"We can expect that more bold innovative moves from Nvidia will help it maintain its industry position for the foreseeable future."

Huang said he expects demand for Nvidia chips to outstrip supply for some time to come.

"We're racing every single day" with Nvidia chips being snapped up as fast as they are made, according to Huang.