AI chipmaker Nvidia reported a massive $57 billion in quarterly revenue on Wednesday, a whopping increase of 62 percent compared to the same period last year, exceeding Wall Street’s wildest expectations.
The numbers appear to have calmed nervous investors, who had been palpably nervous about a looming AI bubble during the days leading up to the earnings call. A major tech selloff highlighted ongoing concerns of an astronomical gap between sky-high valuations and relatively meager revenues.
But considering Nvidia is selling shovels during an ongoing AI gold rush, the chipmaker was bound to mint astronomical amounts of money either way. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang used the opportunity to rally weary investors, reminding them there’s plenty of gold to be panned.
“There’s been a lot of talk about an AI bubble,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang told investors during Wednesday’s earnings call. “From our vantage point, we see something very different.”
Nvidia’s shares spiked over four percent when trading resumed on Thursday, indicating the recently ebbing exuberance is roaring back in full force. The S&P 500 popped almost two percent as well, showing that traders are ready to hop back on the gravy train — at least for now.
The stakes are enormous as the booming AI industry continues to concentrate market value at an astonishing rate. Nvidia accounts for roughly eight percent of the entire S&P 500 in terms of market value, meaning that countless investors are tied to the company’s fate. The industry’s market value of $4.4 trillion would make it the fourth-largest economy after the United States, China, and Germany by GDP.
In the meantime, Nvidia isn’t just the bellwether of the global financial market; it’s the one actually cashing in on the AI hype.
“We’re in every cloud,” Huang said. “The reason why developers love us is because we’re literally everywhere.”
Companies are increasingly desperate to secure hardware to power resource-intensive AI models, presenting Nvidia with a supply — rather than demand — side challenge.
Huang claimed that demand for its Blackwell graphics processing units, which are AI-optimized chips that were unveiled in March, is “off the charts,” while “cloud GPUs are sold out.”
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