California-based company reports seven-fold jump in profit to $14.88bn in first quarter.

Nvidia, the chipmaker at the centre of the boom in artificial intelligence (AI), has reported a seven-fold jump in profit, sending its stock to a record high.

The Santa Clara, California-based company said on Wednesday that net income rose to $14.88bn in the first quarter, up from $2.04bn a year earlier.

Revenue more than tripled to $26.04bn, well above analysts’ forecasts.

Nvidia forecast revenue would hit $28bn, plus or minus 2 percent, in the second quarter, also beating analysts’ forecasts.

Nvidia also announced it would split its stock 10-for-1, effective June 7, to make its shares more accessible, and raise its quarterly dividend by 150 percent to 1 cent per share.

Stock splits increase the number of outstanding shares without affecting the company’s market capitalisation, making each share cheaper to buy for investors.

Nvidia shares, which are up over 90 percent this year, surged 5.9 percent to break past the $1,000 mark.

“The next industrial revolution has begun,” Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang said in a conference call with analysts.

“Companies and countries are partnering with Nvidia to shift the trillion-dollar traditional data centres to accelerated computing and build a new type of data centre – AI factories – to produce a new commodity: artificial intelligence.”

Huang said he expected demand for Nvidia chips to outstrip supply for the foreseeable future, with the company “racing every single day” to keep up with orders.

Nvidia has seen skyrocketing demand for its graphics processing units over the past year as tech giants such as Google, Meta, OpenAI and Amazon race to take the lead in AI.

In March, Nvidia overtook Saudi Aramco to become the world’s third-most valuable firm after Apple and Microsoft, with a market value of more than $2.1 trillion.