LOS ANGELES — Nvidia on Wednesday reported a surge in third-quarter profit and sales as demand for its specialized computer chips that power artificial intelligence systems remains robust.
For the three months that ended Oct. 27, the tech giant based in Santa Clara, California, posted revenue of $35.08 billion, up 94% from $18.12 billion a year ago.
Nvidia said it earned $19.31 billion in the quarter, more than double the $9.24 billion it posted in last year’s third quarter. Adjusted for one-time items, it earned 81 cents a share.
Wall Street analysts had been expecting adjusted earnings of 75 cents a share on revenue of $33.17 billion, according to FactSet.
Investors took the results in stride, however, and Nvidia’s high-flying stock slipped about 1% in after-hours trading. Shares in Nvidia Corp. are up 195% so far this year.
“The age of AI is in full steam, propelling a global shift to Nvidia computing,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said in a statement.
Analysts’ were eyeing Nvidia’s guidance on its Blackwell graphics processor unit, a next-generation artificial intelligence chip that’s seen demand from companies like OpenAI and others building AI data centers. Over the summer, the tech juggernaut said it would increase production of its Blackwell AI chips beginning in the fourth quarter and continuing through fiscal 2026.
Huang said in an interview with CNBC last month that demand for Blackwell is “insane.”
“Everybody wants to have the most and everybody wants to be first,” Huang said.
Nvidia has led the artificial intelligence sector to become one of the stock market’s biggest companies, as tech giants spend heavily on the company’s chips and data centers needed to train and operate their AI systems.
The company carved out an early lead in AI applications race, in part because of Huang’s successful bet on the chip technology used to fuel the industry. The company is no stranger to big bets. Nvidia’s invention of graphics processor chips, or GPUs, in 1999 helped spark the growth of the PC gaming market and redefined computer graphics.
Demand for generative AI products that can compose documents, make images and serve as personal assistants has fueled sales of Nvidia’s specialized chips over the last year. Nvidia, the most valuable publicly traded company by market cap as of Wednesday morning, is now worth over $3.5 trillion, with analysts closely monitoring Nvidia’s path to $4 trillion.
Through the year’s first six months, Nvidia’s stock soared nearly 150%. At that point, the stock was trading at a little more than 100 times the company’s earnings over the prior 12 months. That’s much more expensive than it’s been historically and than the S&P 500 in general.
