Nvidia smashes forecasts with record quarter as AI boom rolls on

San Francisco – Nvidia on Feb 25 reported blockbuster quarterly results that blew past Wall Street expectations, posting record revenue of US$68.1 billion (S$86 billion) as insatiable demand for its artificial intelligence chips showed no sign of cooling.

The figures – up 73 per cent from a year ago and well above the US$65.7 billion analysts had forecast – sent a powerful signal that the technology buildout dominated by Nvidia that underpins the global AI boom remains in full swing.

Net income for the quarter more than doubled year on year to US$42.96 billion; the earnings release sent shares surging 5 per cent in after-hours trading.

Nvidia designs the graphics processing units that have become the backbone of the global artificial intelligence boom.

Founded in 1993 by Mr Jensen Huang, who remains chief executive, the US-based company commands a market capitalisation exceeding US$4.7 trillion, making it the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.

Combined capital expenditure from the four major AI builders – Google, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft – could approach US$700 billion in 2026 as the tech giants race to stay ahead in the crucial technology.

A large share of that spending lands at Nvidia, which remains the dominant supplier of the AI chips and technology used to train and deliver generative AI capability.

Mr Huang said the AI industry had reached a decisive turning point driven by the rise of so-called agentic AI - systems that can make decisions and act autonomously on behalf of humans.

“We have now seen the inflection of agentic AI and the usefulness of agents across the world,” he said, adding that enterprises everywhere were seeing “incredible” demand because of it.

He pointed to the rapid adoption of AI coding and productivity tools – including Anthropic’s Claude and OpenAI’s Codex – as evidence that AI was now delivering tangible returns for both customers and cloud providers.

Speaking to analysts, he warned that the traditional software industry was being fundamentally transformed by this adoption, an argument that has seen shares in enterprise software companies spiral lower in recent sessions on Wall Street.

“What used to be software running on computers has now gone into AI,” he said, “and that translates directly to growth, and that translates directly to revenues” for companies deploying AI solutions.

The company’s data centre division, which sells the high-powered chips used to train and run AI models, was once again the engine of growth.

Revenue from that segment hit a record US$62.3 billion in the quarter, up 75 per cent from a year earlier and up 22 per cent from the prior quarter.

For the full fiscal year ending January, Nvidia reported revenue of US$215.9 billion, up 65 per cent from the previous year, with data centre revenue reaching US$193.7 billion – a 68 per cent annual gain.

Perhaps more significant for investors was Nvidia’s guidance for the current quarter.

The company said it is not assuming any data centre compute revenue from China in its outlook, an acknowledgement of the ongoing impact of US export controls on its ability to sell advanced chips to the world’s second-largest economy.

Even if the US government has greenlit exports of “small amounts” of lower-powered chips to China, “we have yet to generate any revenue, and we do not know whether any imports will be allowed into China”, Nvidia chief financial analyst Colette Kress told analysts.

The company forecast the current quarter’s revenue at US$78 billion, plus or minus 2 per cent – comfortably above the roughly US$72 billion Wall Street had been expecting, and a figure that analysts said would go a long way towards silencing doubts about the durability of AI infrastructure spending.

Considered a main bellwether for the AI phenomenon, the recurring question for Nvidia is whether the boom will continue to accelerate as the technology takes over more corners of the broader economy.

Despite increased volatility around AI on Wall Street, Nvidia shares are up by more than 50 per cent over the past year, though just 2.2 per cent year to date, before the latest earnings. AFP