The impetus of artificial intelligence is already noticeable in the accounts of companies. Chip leader Nvidia yesterday presented a better-than-expected outlook for the artificial intelligence (AI) push that has propelled it strongly on the stock market. This rise was also entrusted to the rest of the sector during yesterday's trading day.
The rise inflated Nvidia's capitalization by $200 billion and brought it closer to a stock market valuation of $1 trillion, a title that has been within the reach of very few firms, such as Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Alphabet , Saudi Aramco, Tesla or Meta.
"The IT industry is going through two simultaneous transitions: accelerated computing and generative artificial intelligence," Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, said yesterday in the presentation of results, for whom the demand for data center infrastructure will be driven by this double transition "as companies rush to apply generative artificial intelligence to every product, service and business process".
"The transformative increase in spending on artificial intelligence is bearing fruit much earlier than expected", says Joseph Moore, Morgan Stanley analyst. With the voraciousness it has for AI solutions and teams, Nvidia expects its revenue in the second quarter to be 50% higher than analysts expected. It will bring in 11 billion dollars for the 7.15 billion predicted by Wall Street. "It is one of the clear winners of generative artificial intelligence. It is enjoying a very solid business development", says Simon Webber, manager of Schroders. Nvidia has reallocated productive capacity from PC gaming to AI. "The company is increasing its offer to meet the growing demand for its chips, which power services such as ChatGPT and other similar services," says Sergio Ávila, IG analyst. “The generative artificial intelligence gold rush should drive demand for Nvidia chips for the rest of the year. While their PC gaming chips sell for $1,500, the AI chips cost more than ten times that figure, around $20,000 each,” says Ávila.
Nvidia's momentum has benefited the rest of the sector. In the United States, the American firm AMD also shot up by 9%. In Europe, the shares of the Dutch company BE Semiconductor advanced by 8%, a run similar to that of its compatriot ASM International. ASML, with a much larger capitalization, advanced slightly less, by 5%. And in Asia, Taiwan's TSMC - which manufactures for Nvidia - advanced by 3%; Japan's Advantest, which tests semiconductors, another 16%, and Korea's Hynix, 6%.
