Nvidia profits soar driven by demand for AI chips
Tech giant Nvidia easily beat Wall Street estimates as its profits and revenues skyrocketed, boosted by its chipmaking dominance which has made the company an icon of the artificial intelligence boom. Its net income rose more than sevenfold compared to a year earlier, jumping to US$14.88 billion in its first quarter that ended April 28 from US$2.04 billion a year earlier.  Revenue more than tripled, rising to US$26.04 billion from US$7.19 billion in the previous year. “The next industrial revolution has begun,” CEO Jensen Huang declared on a conference call with analysts.  Huang predicted that the companies snapping up Nvidia chips will use them to build a new type of data centre he called “AI factories” designed to produce “a new commodity — artificial intelligence.” Huang added that training AI models was becoming a faster process as they learn to become “multimodal” — that is, capable of understanding text, speech, images, video and 3-D data — and also “to reason and plan.” The company reported earnings per share — adjusted to exclude one-time items — of US$6.12, well above the US$5.60 that Wall Street analysts had expected.  Shares in Nvidia Corp rose 6 percent in after-hours trading to US$1,006.89.  The company’s stock has risen more than 200 percent in the past year. (AP)