Tesla Partner Nvidia Smashes Q1 Views On ‘Sweeping’ AI Adoption
Tesla Motors ( TSLA ) partner Nvidia ( NVDA ) rocketed late Thursday after the maker of graphics chips beat Q1 sales expectations and topped earnings views by a penny, led by faster adoption of artificial intelligence technology that utilizes Nvidia graphics chips. In after-hours trading after its earnings release, Nvidia stock was up nearly 6%, rebounding from a 1.4% dip, to 35.57, in the regular session. Shares are up 8% for the year. For Q1, Nvidia reported $1.3 billion in sales and 33 cents earnings per share, up a respective 13% and 38% vs. the year-earlier quarter, and topping the consensus of 26 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters for $1.26 billion and 32 cents. CEO Jen-Hsun Huang credited accelerated growth of deep-learning, or AI, technology for the Q1 beat. “Accelerating our growth is deep learning, a new computing model that uses the GPU’s (graphics processing unit) massive computing power to learn artificial intelligence algorithms,” he said in the company’s earnings release. “Its adoption is sweeping one industry after another, driving demand for our GPUs.” Nvidia’s soon-to-be-released Pascal chip will continue that drive, he said. “Our new Pascal GPU (graphics processing unit) architecture will give a giant boost to deep learning, gaming and VR (virtual reality),” he said. “Pascal processors are in full production and will be available later this month.” Nvidia competes against Advanced Micro Devices ( AMD ) in the graphics-chip market. Their GPUs are installed in computers running the VR tech to process images for gaming headsets like Facebook ( FB )-owned Oculus Rift. Its chips are used in some displays in Tesla’s electric cars. For the current quarter, Nvidia expects $1.35 billion in sales, plus or minus 2%, which would be up 17% at the midpoint vs. the year-ago quarter. Nvidia didn’t offer an earnings view, but Wall Street consensus models 33 cents.