Nvidia just keeps hitting it out of the park

Nvidia's sales outdid expectations and it issued a bullish forecast, showing chip demand isn't slowing down. That helped push shares to above $1,000.

• Nvidia's Q1 revenue hit a record $26 billion, surpassing analyst estimates.
• Nvidia also gave a bullish second-quarter sales forecast.
• Demand for its new AI chips may exceed supply well into next year, it said.

Tech's hottest stock isn't cooling down anytime soon.

Nvidia released its fiscal first-quarter results on Wednesday and reported record quarterly revenues of $26 billion — outdoing analyst estimates for $24.65 billion. That's up over 260% from a year ago, showing that raging demand for its chips, which are used to power artificial intelligence technology, is still growing.

Nvidia shared a solid forecast for the future, too, saying second-quarter revenue will be about $28 billion, also ahead of expectations.

The news helped push Nvidia's shares up in late trading to above $1,000 for the first time. The stock has risen more than 200% in the last twelve months.

Even as customers wait for Blackwell, Nvidia's next GPU chip, to be released later this year, sales of its H100 chip are still strong, the company said. CFO Colette Kress also told investors on a call that demand for its H200 and Blackwell chips is well ahead of supply as the company works towards global availability of the latter later this year.

"We expect demand may exceed supply well into next year," Kress said.

Meantime, CEO Jensen Huang said the company would see "a lot of Blackwell revenue this year."

Nvidia also raised its quarterly dividend by 150%, from four to 10 cents per share, and announced a 10-for-1 stock split, effective next month.

Jacob Bourne, a senior analyst at Emarketer, a sister company to Business Insider, said Nvidia defied gravity again as "AI companies globally continue to depend on its chips, networking hardware, and its software ecosystem."

Some tech giants have recently announced plans to create their own chips to help power their AI offerings. Google is making its own Arm-based CPU processor, Axion, and Microsoft is also attempting to develop its own AI chips. However, most companies are still relying on Nvidia.

"Tech companies' public praise of Nvidia is a telltale sign of its dominance — they want to reduce their dependence on the chipmaker but realize they're not quite there yet," Bourne said. "We can expect that more bold innovative moves from Nvidia will help it maintain its industry position for the foreseeable future."