Nvidia, the artificial intelligence chipmaker, was crowned the world’s first $4 trillion public company last month and has become perhaps the most important factor determining the direction of the stock market.
On Wednesday, the Silicon Valley company reported results that showed that spending on A.I. infrastructure remains robust, easing the anxieties of Wall Street and investors around the world.
Concerns over whether tech companies would continue shelling out billions to build A.I. data centers — spending that has helped prop up the economy — had mounted in recent months. But Nvidia’s sales rose 56 percent to $46.74 billion in the three months that ended in July, just topping Wall Street’s expectations. Profit increased more than 59 percent to $26.42 billion.
Revenue in the current quarter is projected to rise 54 percent from a year ago to $54 billion, as tech companies pour money into data centers. The forecast was in line with Wall Street’s prediction for $53.9 billion, but the company said that its estimates didn’t include any sales for China, which would lift its revenue higher.
“The A.I. race is on,” said Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive, in a statement. He said the company’s chips were “at its center.”
Shares of Nvidia fell more than 3 percent in after-hours trading.
Nvidia’s results have been closely watched since OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot in late 2022, igniting an A.I. boom. The company’s fortunes have soared as tech companies have flocked to buy its chips, which are ideal for powering the development of A.I. Nvidia has grown into the market’s most significant stock, accounting for 7.5 percent of every dollar in the S&P 500, up from 3 percent in December 2024. Its results also influence the values of tech and energy companies with A.I. businesses.
“The question has been: Will the A.I. wave continue or could it meaningfully slow down?” said Melissa Otto, the head of research at S&P Global Visible Alpha. She said that failing to meet expectations would be “like a grenade on the market. It could blow up a lot of things.”
In recent months, demand for Nvidia’s newest chip, the Blackwell, has been especially scrutinized. Released late last year, sales of the product have accelerated, with the company distributing about 72,000 Blackwell chips a week for an estimated price of $30,000 each.
The chip has contributed to Meta, Google and other cloud computing companies increasing what they spend on data centers. In July, Meta said it would spend $7 billion more on data centers than planned this year, and Google said it would spend an additional $10 billion.
Yet Nvidia has faced challenges, namely getting caught in the broader U.S.-China power struggle. China is the world’s largest chip market, and Mr. Huang has said that Nvidia needs to be there because half of the world’s A.I. developers are Chinese. But it has needed permission from Washington and Beijing to operate there.
In April, the Trump administration blocked Nvidia from selling its H20 chip, which was made specifically for Chinese companies, over concerns the chips could be used to help China’s A.I. industry and military. After Mr. Huang lobbied to reverse that decision, President Trump agreed in August to allow the sales.
China later summoned Mr. Huang to Beijing to discuss its concerns about the security of Nvidia’s chips. It later discouraged Chinese companies from buying the H20.
Analysts estimated Nvidia would reap about $16 billion in revenue from China this year and have projected that sales there could eclipse $56 billion next year, which would be a major boost to the company’s total revenue. But Nvidia said in a news release that it has not assumed it will have any sales in China in the current quarter.
Mr. Huang has spoken with the Trump administration about selling a modified version of the company’s Blackwell chip, which would be 30 percent to 50 percent less powerful than the chips sold in the United States.
Lennart Heim, a tech analyst at RAND Corporation, a think tank, said that Chinese companies would likely buy two of those chips at a premium price and piece them together to get more performance.
“If this chip gets approved, there would be massive demand,” Mr. Heim said. “It’s significantly better than any chip China can produce, and they would love it.”
Tripp Mickle reports on Apple and Silicon Valley for The Times and is based in San Francisco. His focus on Apple includes product launches, manufacturing issues and political challenges. He also writes about trends across the tech industry, including layoffs, generative A.I. and robot taxis.
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