Strong AI chip demand fuels Nvidia's Q2 results well beyond Wall Street's expectations

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Nvidia's latest quarterly results once again blew past Wall Street's expectations as revenue for the computer chip company's high-end artificial intelligence chips soared, the latest sign that AI infrastructure spending remains strong.

The company reported on Wednesday net income of $59.69 billion, or $2.46 per share, for the May-July period. That compares to net income of $26.42 billion, or $1.08 per share, in the same quarter last year.

Excluding certain items, earnings were $2.22 per share, well above the $2.09 per share consensus forecast by Wall Street analysts, according to FactSet.

Revenue more than doubled from a year earlier to $96.22 billion, surpassing analysts’ average forecast of $92.27 billion.

The Santa Clara, California, company's results have regularly cleared the bar set by analysts in the past three years, often by a wide margin, since Nvidia’s high-end chips emerged as AI’s best building blocks.

Along with higher profit and revenue, however, Nvidia’s operating expenses surged 55% to $8.41 billion.

For the current quarter, Nvidia forecast revenue of about $108 billion. Analysts are forecasting $104.86 billion.

If Nvidia hits its revenue target for the August-October period, it will translate into a roughly 89% increase from last year — an indication that Nvidia’s phenomenal growth rate is still accelerating.

The company said it’s not assuming any data center compute revenue from China in its outlook.

“AI has reached its inflection point. It’s doing useful work. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Now, compute is revenue,” said CEO Jensen Huang in a statement.

Nvidia’s data center segment, which includes its AI data centers and factories business, as well as chip demand from hyperscalers — operators of huge cloud-computing data centers such as Amazon, Meta and Google — reported revenue of $89 billion, up more than twofold from a year earlier.

The company’s edge computing segment, which includes chips bringing AI-powered features to computers, game consoles and robotics, among others, posted revenue of $7.2 billion, up 27% from the same period last year.

Despite the stellar results and still-rosy outlook, many investors worry about a jarring comedown after a three-year boom that has seen Nvidia’s market value soar from $400 billion at the end of 2022 to roughly $5.2 trillion now.

While AI has powered stock market gains and U.S. economic growth in recent years, there’s been growing skepticism about whether AI will justify the trillions of dollars that are being spent to develop the technology.

The AI industry is also increasingly facing pushback amid objections to the expansion in data centers and fears that the speed with which AI is being adopted could lead to widespread job losses for many Americans.

Nvidia’s shares slipped 0.3% in after-hours trading shortly after it released its latest results. The stock ended the regular trading session 1.6% lower and is up 12.4% so far this year.