Nvidia bets $25 billion that AI boom is far from over

investing.com:

By Stephen Nellis and Max A. Cherney

(Reuters) -Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang said he expects the artificial intelligence boom will last well into next year and made what could be the largest single bet yet in the tech sector to back up his optimism.

The company's sales forecast on Wednesday blew past Wall Street's expectations and it said it would buy back another $25 billion of its shares, a move most companies make when their leadership thinks the company is undervalued. Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA)'s stock price, though, has more than tripled this year and was set to hit an all-time high after Wednesday's results.

Nvidia said it plans to ramp up production of its hardware into next year, quashing doubts that a few analysts had raised about how long the AI craze could last. The company has a near-monopoly on the computing systems used to power services like ChatGPT, OpenAI's blockbuster generative AI chatbot.

«We have excellent visibility through the year and into next year, and we're already planning the next generation infrastructure with leading (cloud computing firms) and data center builders,» Huang told investors on a conference call.

In an interview with Reuters, Huang said two things are driving that demand: a switch from traditional data centers that were built around central processors to ones built around Nvidia's powerful chips, and the rising use of content generated by AI systems in everything from legal contracts to marketing materials.

«These two fundamental trends are what's behind everything that we're seeing, and we're about a quarter into it,» he said. «It's hard to say how many quarters are ahead of us, but this fundamental shift is not going to end. This is not a one-quarter thing.»

Huang's move to buy back