Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang speaks during Nvidia Live at CES 2026 ahead of the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Nevada, Jan. 5. AFP-Yonhap SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) -- Chip giant Nvidia on Wednesday posted record quarterly revenue of $81.6 billion, blowing past Wall Street forecasts as insatiable demand for its artificial intelligence hardware powered another blockbuster quarter.The results for the first quarter of fiscal 2027, ending April 26, marked an 85 percent jump from the same period a year ago and a 20 percent rise from the prior quarter, underscoring Nvidia's status as the primary beneficiary of a global AI infrastructure build out.Net profit surged to $58.3 billion, more than tripling from $18.8 billion in the year-earlier period.Nvidia's data center business, which sells the processors powering AI systems at tech giants and technology companies worldwide, was the engine behind the quarter's performance.Data center revenue, which includes Nvidia's key graphics processing units, hit a record $75.2 billion, up 92 percent from a year ago.A GPU is a specialized computer chip originally designed to render video game graphics at high speed, but Nvidia has since made it the engine powering artificial intelligence.That pivot has made Nvidia the world's most valuable company, on the back of huge demand for its AI hardware.Demand for Nvidia products seems insatiable despite recurring talk on Wall Street that the AI spending spree could come to a halt.Since its February earnings report, Nvidia has disclosed a $10 billion investment in Anthropic, a major deal with Meta, and a commitment to AI company CoreWeave targeting five gigawatts of AI facilities by 2030.For the current quarter, Nvidia projected revenue of $91 billion, representing a further acceleration in growth.Crucially, Nvidia said it was not assuming any data center revenue from China in its outlook, where its core product has been caught up in a geopolitical dispute between Beijing and Washington.Nvidia boss Jensen Huang this week said he expected China to eventually open its market to high-end US chips that can train and run artificial intelligence systems.The superpowers are in a fierce race for AI supremacy, and Nvidia's H200 chip had until recently been barred from sale in China by Washington over national security concerns.However, there is no sign that Chinese tech companies are buying them, as Beijing ramps up domestic chip development in a bid to challenge US dominance in the sector.Investors shrugged off the results in the earnings report, with Nvidia shares down more than one percent in after-hours trading.