Is Nvidia making money?

Nvidia on Wednesday reported fiscal first-quarter earnings which had beaten expectations for sales and earnings and provided a strong forecast for the current quarter.

Nvidia’s results have become a medium for investors to measure the strength of the AI boom that has the markets transfixed in recent months.

The company’s strong results suggested that the demand for AI chips Nvidia makes remains strong.

The stock increased by over 3% in extended trading. It was splitting its stock 10 to 1, Nvidia said.

Nvidia shares on Tuesday hit a record, closing in at $953.86, before slipping the next day.

Depending on the after-market move, the shares are expected to reach a fresh high on Thursday.

The company expected sales of $28 billion in the current quarter, it said. Wall Street, meanwhile, was expecting earnings of $5.95 per share on sales of $26.61 billion, as per LSEG.

Nvidia had reported a net income for the $14.88 billion quarter, or $5.98 per share, compared with $2.04 billion, or 82 cents, in the year-ago period.

Over the last year, Nvidia sales have skyrocketed as companies such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, Amazon and OpenAI have been buying Nvidia’s GPUs for billions of dollars, which are advanced and expensive chips, required for developing and deploying artificial intelligence apps.

The company’s most important business, also its largest, is the data center sales, which includes AI chips as well as many other additional parts needed to run huge AI servers.

The data center category of Nvidia rose 427% to $22.6 billion from the year-ago quarter in revenue, according to the company.

The progress was because of the shipments of “Hopper” graphics processors, which include the company’s H100 GPU, said Nvidia CFO Colette Kress, in a statement.