Growing demand for graphics processor units led Nvidia Corp. to another successful quarter, bolstered by the performance of its secondary data center and AI businesses. According to Thomson Reuters, Nvidia’s forecast revenue of $1.90 billion (plus or minus 2 percent) for the current quarter exceeded analyst expectations of $1.88 billion.
Much of the company’s growth was in its graphics processing unit business, which rose 57 percent to $1.85 billion in Q4. Though the PC market has been in decline as of late, PC gaming is growing with major titles such as League of Legends and Overwatch generating many hundred millions of dollars in sales. Nvidia’s dominance over the high-end GPU market ensures that in many ways the company is poised to ride the wave of demand for powerful hardware in gaming and elsewhere.
Nvidia’s smaller businesses are also doing well, with its data center business tripling in value to $296 million.Their clients include Amazon’s Amazon Web Services, Microsoft’s Azure and Alibaba’s cloud server business. Its automotive business also posted a 37.6 percent rise to $128 million, though this missed analyst targets slightly. Nvidia produces the DRIVE PX2 open AI car computing platform used in all vehicles built by Tesla Inc, an end-to-end AI computing system that is capable of the rapid calculations needed for autonomous driving.