• Hardware manufacturer Nvidia has reported record profits in its latest results, with revenues leaping to $13.5 billion.
• Profits increased 843 percent compared the year prior mostly on the back of hardware that powers generative AI tech for some the world’s biggest firms.
• The tech industry has been waiting for Nvidia’s latest results to showcase how massive the boom in AI-related technology has been and it was not disappointed.

Known for its gaming graphics processing units (GPU), Nvidia also makes chips that power the latest generative AI technology, which the world’s largest firms now focused on that technology, are buying in droves.

The world’s largest tech firms are investing billions into generative AI, and for many that means buying chips from Nvidia, which has become the to-go supplier for companies the world over. This boom has led to record profits for the California firm. In its latest results, it said that it made $6.18 billion net, after revenues of a whopping $13.5 billion.

Income for the quarter was 843 percent up compared to the same period last year in which it made $656 million, three digits that are sure to have the champagne flowing at the Nvidia offices.

“A new computing era has begun. Companies worldwide are transitioning from general-purpose to accelerated computing and generative AI,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia.

“During the quarter, major cloud service providers announced massive NVIDIA H100 AI infrastructures. Leading enterprise IT system and software providers announced partnerships to bring NVIDIA AI to every industry. The race is on to adopt generative AI,” he added. It seems that if AI is indeed a race, Nvidia is selling the horses.

Two of the biggest frontrunners of the generative AI race are Microsoft and Google. The two tech giants and their chief executives have been hard at work trying to one-up each other since the technology became mainstream with the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. While Google was the creator of the first large language models that power generative AI, Microsoft made the right business moves at the right time, notably becoming OpenAI’s most important partner.

Google has been trying to play catch up since. Microsoft is seen as the leader in the space, and with Nvidia’s results its own shares leapt 1.9 percent on Wednesday.

The dramatic profit increase shows that Nvidia’s bet on AI was right on the money, but it reported positive results in its other segments as well. Gaming saw an 11 percent increase in revenues, despite a global economic downturn and consumer hesitance to buy new tech.

Nvidia began selling its GeForce RTX 4060 cards in the quarter, boosting sales and closing partnerships with some of the biggest titles and developers, including Diablo IV and Baldur’s Gate 3. Its RTX technology has spurred gamers, and it promotes community initiatives like the Half-Life 2 RTX project on official channels.

Of course, gamers will have to buy Nvidia’s cards for similar experiences, driving sales.

Driving its shares up even more was a return of $3.28 billion to shareholders in the form of 7.5 million shares repurchased and cash dividends. It says it plans to continue buying shares back from its shareholders for the rest of the year, effectively putting money in investor pockets.

Diluted earnings per share were at $2.48, up 202 percent from the last quarter, from 82 cents.

According to Reuters, analysts expect the AI boom to continue for several more quarters, and Nvidia will continue raking it in.

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