Computer chipmaker Nvidia is poised to release a quarterly earnings report Wednesday that is expected to either deepen a recent downturn in the stock market or prompt an sigh of relief among investors increasingly worried that the world’s most valuable company is perched atop an artificial intelligence bubble that’s about to burst.
Nvidia’s report, due after the market closes, has turned into a pulse check on an AI boom that began three years ago when OpenAI released ChatGPT. That breakthrough transformed Nvidia from a mostly under-the-radar chipmaker — best known for making graphics chips for video games — into an AI bellwether because its unique chipsets have become indispensable for powering the technology underlying the craze.
As OpenAI and longtime Big Tech powerhouses — such as Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Facebook parent Meta Platforms — buy more and more of Nvidia’s chips, its annual revenue has soared from $27 billion in 2022 to a projected $208 billion this year. That rapid run-up has fueled a 10-fold increase in Nvidia’s market value, which now stands at $4.5 trillion, surpassing Apple, Microsoft and Google parent Alphabet, currently valued in the $3 trillion to $4 trillion range.
