Nvidia on Wednesday reported a rise in third-quarter profit and revenue as demand for its specialized computer chips that power artificial intelligence systems remains robust.

For the three months ended Oct. 27, the Santa Clara, California-based tech giant posted revenue of $35.08 billion, up 94% from $18.12 billion a year ago.

Nvidia said it earned $19.31 billion this quarter, more than double the $9.24 billion it made in the third quarter of last year. Adjusted for one-time items, it earned 81 cents per share.

Wall Street analysts had expected adjusted earnings of 75 cents per share on revenue of $33.17 billion, according to FactSet.

Investors were upbeat about the results, however, with high-flying Nvidia stock down about 1% in after-hours trading. The shares in Nvidia Corp. are up 195% so far this year. Nvidia said it expects fourth-quarter revenue to grow to $37.5 billion, plus or minus 2%. Analysts expect an average of $37.09 billion.

“The age of AI is in full force, driving a global shift to Nvidia computing,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of Nvidia, in a statement.

Nvidia’s data center revenue was $30.8 billion in the third quarter, up 112% from a year ago. That growth was driven by demand for the Hopper computing platform for large language models, recommendation engines and generative AI applications, the company said.

Analysts looked at Nvidia’s guidance on the Blackwell graphics processing unit, a next-generation artificial intelligence chip that has attracted demand from companies like OpenAI and others building AI data centers.

Nvidia Chief Financial Officer Colette Kress said Blackwell production shipments are scheduled to begin in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 and will continue to increase through fiscal 2026.

During an earnings call Wednesday, Kress told investors that both the Hopper GPU and Blackwell systems “have certain supply constraints, and demand for Blackwell is expected to exceed supply for several quarters in fiscal 2026.”

“Every customer is racing to be first to market,” Kress said. “Blackwell is now owned by all of our major partners, and they are working to bring their data centers to market.”

The company, seen as a bellwether for AI demand, will deliver “more Blackwells this quarter than we previously estimated,” Huang added.

Nvidia has made the artificial intelligence sector one of the biggest businesses in the stock market as tech giants spend heavily on the company’s chips and data centers needed to train and operate their AI systems.

The company had an early lead in the race for AI applications, thanks in part to Huang’s successful bet on the chip technology used to fuel the industry. The company is no stranger to big bets. Nvidia’s invention of graphics processing chips, or GPUs, in 1999 helped fuel the growth of the PC gaming market and redefine computer graphics. The company’s gaming revenue rose to $3.3 billion in the third quarter, up 15% from a year ago.

Nvidia’s fourth-quarter expectations were “a little disappointing,” said David Volpe, senior fund manager at Emerald Insights Fund, but the company still had “a great quarter.”

“There’s nothing as far as growth goes,” Volpe said.

Demand for generative AI products that can compose documents, create images and serve as personal assistants has boosted sales of Nvidia’s specialized chips over the past year. Nvidia, the most valuable publicly traded company by market capitalization as of Wednesday morning, is now worth more than $3.5 trillion, with analysts closely watching Nvidia’s path to $4 trillion.

Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, said the earnings report shows that “the AI ​​revolution is still in its early stages.”

“We consider this a press release about Nvidia’s earnings that should hang in the Louvre,” Ives said. “The demand for Blackwell is just beginning. We would consider any sell-off (in Nvidia stock) to be short-lived. We believe this is a market cap of $4 trillion by 2025 as AI Jensen’s godfather (Huang) drives this spending wave.”

Through the first six months of the year, Nvidia shares rose nearly 150%. At the time, the stock was trading at just over 100 times the company’s earnings over the previous twelve months. That’s much more expensive than historically and than the S&P 500 in general.

“The era of AI is upon us,” Huang said on the call. “And it is large and diverse.”

Parvini writes for the Associated Press.