Artificial-intelligence chips are still growing to be large part of chipmaker Nvidia’s business.
Nvidia announced $2.9 billion in total revenue in its Q24 2018, with $9.71 billion in revenue over the entire year. The company reported $606 million of that revenue from hardware sold for use in data centers, meaning just over 20% of Nvidia’s revenue now comes from AI-optimized data center hardware, up from 13% of its revenue this time last year.
Graphics processing units (GPUs) for gaming still make up the most of the company’s revenue, generating $1.73 billion this past quarter.
Enterprise-grade chips, deemed useful for popular AI computations, have been big, steady business for the Nvidia—the sector’s revenue has grown 524% over the last 4 years. Investors are watching the revenue stream closely, trying to determine whether the company will maintain sustained growth or saturate the market with the hardware.
Gaming, the company’s largest moneymaker, obviously can’t be ignored either. The growing popularity of PC gaming and e-sports have meant that sales of gaming GPUs are have steadily increased, according to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
While volatile cryptocurrencies have increased demand for GPUs like the ones that Nvidia makes for gaming, the company tries to downplay the trend’s potential impact on its bottom line—in favor of the reliable growth that AI hardware brings.
“Nvidia has played down importance of crypto because they know it can be fickle depending on the price of the currency, and they want to support their fan base among gamers,” Kevin Cassidy, Stifel Financial Corp. analyst, said in the Wall Street Journal.