Nvidia (NVDA) reported third quarter earnings after the bell on Wednesday that topped expectations on the strength of sales of its high-powered AI chips powering what its CEO Jensen Huang called the “age of AI.”
The world’s largest publicly traded company by market cap, Nvidia reported earnings per share (EPS) of $0.81 on revenue of $35.1 billion. Analysts were anticipating EPS of $0.74 on revenue of $33.2 billion.
Nvidia also said it anticipates revenue of $37.5 billion, plus or minus 2%. That’s just ahead of Wall Street expectations of $37 billion.
Nvidia’s stock price fell roughly 1% on the news.
“The age of AI is in full steam, propelling a global shift to Nvidia computing,” CEO Jensen Huang, said in a statement. “Demand for Hopper and anticipation for Blackwell — in full production — are incredible as foundation model makers scale pretraining, post-training and inference.”
The chip giant’s Data Center business, which makes up the vast majority of its revenue, brought in $30.8 billion in the quarter, beating out analysts’ expectations of $29 billion, and jumping 112% versus the $14.5 billion the segment made in Q3 last year.
Nvidia’s gaming revenue came in at $3.3 billion from the $2.8 billion the division brought in last year. Analysts were looking for $3 billion.
Nvidia’s stock has continued to rocket higher throughout 2024, thanks to the explosive growth in AI across the tech landscape and beyond.
Nvidia also appeared to assuage concerns about potential slowdowns in the availability of its next-generation Blackwell chip, with CFO Colette Kress saying that the AI GPU will begin shipping in its current quarter and ramp into the year ahead.
“Both Hopper and Blackwell systems have certain supply constraints, and the demand for Blackwell is expected to exceed supply for several quarters in fiscal 2026,” she added.
Shares of Nvidia were up 192% year to date as of Wednesday, easily outpacing any of the company’s chipmaker rivals. AMD (AMD), the closest competitor, has seen its stock price sink over 5% year to date, while Intel (INTC), which is contending with a difficult turnaround, has seen its stock plunge nearly 52%.
Nvidia is facing an uncertain future, given that Donald Trump has threatened to put blanket tariffs on products from around the world.
In addition, the president-elect has raised the specter of tariffs on Taiwan-made chips. That would be a potential alternative to the CHIPS Act, which is designed to bring semiconductor manufacturing back to the US.
The vast majority of Nvidia’s chips are built by TSMC in Taiwan. A tariff could mean that Nvidia will charge more for its AI chips, depressing margins, or pass the added cost on to its customers. Investors are sure to be looking for any guidance Huang has to offer on the topic.
