Chipmaker Nvidia posts record £12.6bn profit as AI boom continues to grip Wall Street

Nvidia posted record quarterly earnings last night in highly anticipated figures that provide the latest evidence of the artificial intelligence (AI) boom that has gripped Wall Street.

The US chipmaker, which designs and supplies graphics processing units to build AI systems, said profits hit £12.6bn during the three months to the end of July, more than double the same period a year earlier.

Revenue rose 122 per cent to £22.8 billion.

The chipmaker has become a poster child for the AI ​​boom that has boosted markets, with its results being watched as closely as major economic figures or central bank updates.

Dan Coatsworth, an analyst at AJ Bell, said: “The company has become so big that it has the power to move markets around the world, up or down.”

Dan Ives of Wedbush Securities described it as “the most important earnings report for the stock market this year.”

Despite the results coming in well above expectations, shares initially stumbled in choppy after-hours trading. Wall Street pundits had forecast revenue and profit of £21.8 billion and £12.1 billion respectively, after a stellar first quarter in which revenue soared 262 percent to £20 billion and profits rose almost sixfold to £12 billion.

Investors had been closely watching the results amid fears that customers might cut back on chip spending.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said: “Nvidia delivered record revenue as global data centers are working at full speed to modernize the entire computing stack with accelerated computing and generative AI.”

Revenue of £24.6bn is expected for the third quarter, after meteoric growth with shares up more than 160 per cent in a year.

It has been at the centre of the AI ​​boom, providing products to companies including Google, Microsoft and Meta, which have invested billions of pounds in the technology.

In February, it was the fastest company to go from a stock market valuation of $1 trillion to $2 trillion.

Today it is valued at almost $3.2tn (£2.4tn). Founded in 1993, the story of the world’s most valuable chipmaker began in a Silicon Valley diner, when Huang and engineers Chris Malachowsky and Curtis Priem made early bets on markets that barely existed, starting with PC gaming and graphics processing.

The bet on AI has proven lucrative. A recent analysis by PwC claims that AI will add £12 trillion to the global economy by 2030.