On August 23, local time, U.S. chip giant NVIDIA announced its second-quarter earnings report as of July 30th. The report shows that by the impact of strong demand for artificial intelligence chips, the company's second-quarter net profit reached a record 6.7 billion U.S. dollars, a year-on-year surge of 422%; revenues also surged 171% year-on-year to 13.5 billion U.S. dollars; gross margins over the same period last year increased by more than 25 percentage points, reaching 71.2%.

　　NVIDIA shares soared nearly 10% after hours that day, with a market capitalization approaching $1.2 trillion. The company's stock price has risen more than 222% so far this year, with a price-earnings ratio as high as 245 times.

　　Fiscal second-quarter revenue far exceeded the forecasts of Wall Street analysts surveyed by FactSet. More strikingly, the company said current fiscal quarter revenue will reach about $16 billion, about $3.5 billion higher than expected.

　　NVIDIA's earnings report also drove up the day's Nasdaq tech stock prices in the US. Microsoft and Meta shares were both up around 2%. NVIDIA said the company's board of directors has approved a $25 billion increase in the size of its share buyback program and expects to continue to buy back shares this fiscal year. NVIDIA repurchased about $3.4 billion of stock in its fiscal second quarter.

　　During the quarter, NVIDIA's data center business revenue grew 141% to $10.3 billion, accounting for more than 76% of its total revenue ratio. This business growth was primarily driven by compute chips and artificial intelligence chips, both of which saw sales grow 195% in the quarter, outpacing overall business growth.

　　Analysts estimate that by fiscal year 2025, NVIDIA's data center division revenue will expand to $40 billion.

　　Customers for NVIDIA's data center products are primarily from cloud providers and large Internet companies, which contribute about half of NVIDIA's data center revenue.

　　NVIDIA expects continued high demand for artificial intelligence chips to continue at least through next year, and said it has secured increased supply so that the number of chips available in the coming months will increase from the current level.

　　NVIDIA now accounts for about 70 percent of global AI chip sales, according to Lucas Kay, an analyst at New York-based research firm Third Bridge Group.

　　The U.S. Wall Street Journal reported that NVIDIA's competitors are hot on its heels. Chipmaker AMD, which also makes graphics processors, is challenging NVIDIA in the advanced AI chip space. Other competitors, from Intel to a range of startups and cloud computing giants, also have their own programs and offerings to get a piece of the nascent market.