Nvidia’s stock soars as chip maker leaves ‘no doubt’ of AI boom

globalnews.ca:

Nvidia on Wednesday forecast a roughly threefold surge in quarterly revenue that handily beat estimates as the company banked on towering demand for its industry-leading artificial-intelligence chips, sending its shares higher.

Nvidia’s stock was up nearly 11 per cent in early trading Thursday.

The already-hefty demand for the company’s data center chips and graphics processing units (GPUs) continues to grow as firms scramble to expand their AI offerings. Nvidia’s silicon dominates the global market for AI chips, where it counts the likes of Microsoft among its customers.

“The market was poised to sell the news following Nvidia’s earnings, given the sky-high expectations and deteriorating macro conditions,” Investing.com analyst Thomas Monteiro said.

“However, once again, the company left no doubt that the AI boom is much more than just a stock market narrative, but rather, the most significant bet from corporations worldwide at this moment.”

The late-day stock jump lifted the market capitalization of the Santa Clara, California, company by more than $129 billion, and pushed up the shares of other AI-related companies including chip designer Arm Holdings. Nvidia and other hardware suppliers linked to AI computing added $160 billion of combined stock market value.

Nvidia on Wednesday forecast first-quarter revenue growth of 233%, ahead of Wall Street expectations of 208% growth.

For the first three quarters of 2023, Nvidia reported quarterly revenue that beat analyst estimates by between 10% and 20%.

Some analysts raised questions about how long Nvidia will be able to sustain this pace of growth.

The company forecast revenue for the current quarter of $24.0 billion, plus or minus 2%. Analysts on average were expecting