Nvidia (NVDA) posted another successful quarter on Wednesday as demand for AI infrastructure drove revenue, earnings and cash flow to record levels.
The chipmaker reported first-quarter revenue of $81.62 billion, up 85% from $44.06 billion a year earlier and above Wall Street estimates of $78.9 billion, according to FactSet data. Adjusted earnings were $1.87 per share, beating analyst expectations of $1.76 per share. The company also gave better-than-expected guidance for the current quarter, forecasting revenue of about $91 billion.
Meanwhile, the company also took steps to return more cash to shareholders. Nvidia’s board authorized an additional $80 billion in share buybacks and raised the quarterly dividend to 25 cents per share from 1 cent previously.
However, despite the strong results, positive outlook and shareholder returns, the stock was down about 1.5% at press time. Investors were likely looking beyond the quarter and analyzing potential challenges to growth opportunities for Nvidia as competition for AI chips continued to grow.
Bitcoin miners with exposure to AI and high-performance computing infrastructure traded slightly higher following Nvidia’s earnings report. Shares of Core Scientific (CORZ) and Cipher Mining (CIFR) rose slightly in after-hours trading as investors continued to view some miners as potential beneficiaries of growing demand for data centers, power capacity and AI computing infrastructure. IREN (IREN), which initially rose, is down about one percent.
“The construction of AI factories, the largest infrastructure expansion in human history, is accelerating at extraordinary speed,” CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement. “Agent AI has arrived, doing productive work, generating real value and scaling quickly across companies and industries,” he added.
Data center growth
Specifically for bitcoin miners moving into the data center business, there was some positive news in the chipmaker’s earnings.
Nvidia’s data center business continued to drive growth as cloud providers, enterprises and governments expanded spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure powered by the company’s chips.
Hyperscalers generated more than half of Nvidia’s $75 billion in data center revenue during the quarter, reaching about $38 billion and increasing 12% from the previous quarter, Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said on the company’s earnings conference call.
The remaining $37 billion came from a segment Nvidia now calls ACIE, which includes AI cloud providers, industrial customers and enterprise markets. Kress said AI cloud revenue tripled from a year earlier as Nvidia helped rapidly expand AI computing capacity into more than 80 data centers with capacities of more than 10 megawatts.
Kress added that spending on AI infrastructure continues to accelerate and demand for Nvidia’s computing systems remains strong. He also said that Nvidia expects to generate $20 billion in CPU revenue this year.
Nvidia said its outlook does not assume any computing revenue for data centers in China, where U.S. export restrictions have limited sales of advanced AI chips.
Investors have closely watched Nvidia’s earnings for signs that spending on AI infrastructure remains strong despite growing doubts about how quickly companies will turn those investments into profits.
So far, Nvidia’s results suggest that demand continues to exceed expectations, which could be a positive for data center providers.
