Chip maker Nvidia again calmed AI bubble fears, blowing past expectations in the fourth quarter as revenue from its key data centre business soared 75 per cent annually amid the continuing artificial intelligence boom.
Net income in the three months ending January 25 nearly doubled from a year ago to almost $43 billion, as revenue rose 73 per cent to a record $68.1 billion, the world's most valuable publicly listed company said on Wednesday.
That was underpinned by its data centre division's record revenue of $62.3 billion, which California-based Nvidia attributed to accelerated computing and AI, describing them as "major platform shifts".
For its full fiscal 2025, Nvidia's revenue hit $215.9 billion and net income rose to $120 billion, which were both up 65 per cent year-on-year.
The company also boosted its outlook for the present first quarter, with revenue pegged at $78 billion.
Shares of Nvidia climbed nearly 3 per cent in after-hours trading. Its results added about $190 billion to its market capitalisation, bringing its valuation to $4.76 trillion.
Chief executive Jensen Huang said Nvidia's customers are "racing" to invest in AI, "powering the AI industrial revolution and their future growth", while promoting the arrival of the agentic AI era.
Agentic AI is designed to make autonomous decisions and act with minimal human supervision, compared with the more commonly used generative AI.
“Computing demand is growing exponentially – the agentic AI inflection point has arrived," said Mr Huang, the world's eighth wealthiest person, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Nvidia became the darling of the technology and stock market realms after its meteoric rise catering to the AI bonanza.
Its latest financial performance, once again, calmed fears of an AI bubble, which had been growing amid concerns that technology stocks were overpriced.
Nvidia's results "were nothing short of amazing and the outlook remains strong", said Adam Thompson, an auditing and risk management expert, and former partner at PwC.
"If Nvidia is posting a strong forecast for next quarter that might mean the AI workload demand is real and hence why the next valuation hike will be in the data centre sector and the AI workload processors," Mr Thompson said.
