Nvidia Corp’s quarterly revenue topped Wall Street estimates on Thursday as demand for its graphics chips used in data centers and gaming devices jumped.
However, sales in its closely watched data center unit fell short of expectations, sending its shares down 2.5 percent in extended trading.
The US chipmaker has diversified its revenue streams by turning to new growth areas such as data centers, artificial intelligence and self-driving cars, while also benefiting from robust sales in its biggest business of supplying graphics chips used in gaming.
Revenue from Nvidia’s data center business, which powers cloud-based services, such as Amazon Web Services, rose 71 percent to US$701 million, but missed analysts’ estimate of US$703 million, Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S said.
Revenue from Nvidia’s best-known business of gaming chips, also used by cryptocurrency miners, rose 68 percent to US$1.72 billion, beating analysts’ average estimate of US$1.65 billion.
However, revenue fell 1 percent quarter-on-quarter in the unit, suggesting a moderating growth from cryptocurrency.
A cryptocurrency boom has powered growth at Nvidia and rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc as their graphics chips provide the high computing ability needed to mine popular virtual currencies such as bitcoin and ethereum, but the sector is battling volatility caused by swings in the currency’s value.
Revenue from Nvidia’s automotive business, which includes its Drive platform used in self-driving cars, rose 4 percent to US$145 million, also topping analysts’ estimate of US$132 million.
The company’s net income rose to US$1.24 billion, or US$1.98 per share, in the first quarter ended April 29, from US$507 million, or US$0.79 cents per share, a year earlier. Total revenue rose to US$3.21 billion from US$1.94 billion. Excluding items, Nvidia earned US$0.0205 per share.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts