Nvidia

Chip giant Nvidia flouts AI scepticism with record revenue

Giant Nvidia reported its fourth quarter revenue jumped by 73% compared to the same period a year ago to $68.1bn (£50.2bn) - a record haul for the company.

芯片巨头英伟达公布，其第四季度营收较去年同期飙升73%，达到681亿美元（约合502亿英镑），创下公司历史新高。

The revenue figures beat analyst expectations and come amid a wave of investor scepticism towards the massive amounts of capital being spent on artificial intelligence (AI) technology.

这一营收数据超出了分析师预期，而当前正值投资者对人工智能技术投入的巨额资金普遍持怀疑态度之际。

"Computing demand is growing exponentially," boss Jensen Huang said. "Our customers are racing to invest in AI compute — the factories powering the AI industrial revolution and their future growth."

“计算需求正呈指数级增长，”首席执行官黄仁勋表示，“我们的客户正竞相投资AI算力——这些算力是驱动人工智能工业革命及其未来增长的‘工厂’。”

While providing chips for companies across the AI sector, in recent weeks Nvidia has also laid out plans to generate demand with new technologies of its own.

在为整个AI行业的公司提供芯片的同时，近几周英伟达也公布了计划，旨在通过其自身的新技术来创造需求。

The company reported total annual revenue of $215.9bn for the past fiscal year, and has projected a rosy outlook for the months ahead.

该公司报告称，过去一个财年的总收入为2159亿美元，并对未来数月的前景给出了乐观的预测。

Nvidia is the world's most valuable publicly-traded company, with a market cap of around $4.8tn.

英伟达是全球市值最高的上市公司，市值约为4.8万亿美元。

It has become a central player in the buildout of AI infrastructure, providing sophisticated chips to leading AI model developers including OpenAI and Meta.

它已成为AI基础设施建设中的核心参与者，为包括OpenAI和Meta在内的领先AI模型开发商提供尖端芯片。

Gene Munster, manager partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said that buildout was likely to continue for a long time.

Deepwater资产管理公司的管理合伙人吉恩·蒙斯特表示，这一建设进程很可能将持续很长时间。

"AI is accelerating faster than people not using these tools can grasp," Munster wrote on the social media platform X on Wednesday.

“人工智能的发展速度，比那些不使用这些工具的人所能理解的还要快，”蒙斯特周三在社交媒体平台X上写道。

Nvidia has been scrutinised by investors who worry about its ever-expanding web of deals with other companies.

投资者一直密切关注英伟达，对其不断扩大的与其他公司的交易网络感到担忧。

Critics have raised the spectre of "circular financing" deals in which investments by Nvidia in other companies may be clouding perceptions about how robust AI demand really is.

批评人士提出了“循环融资”的隐忧，即英伟达对其他公司的投资，可能模糊了人们对AI需求真实强劲程度的判断。

Nvidia is also expanding its own product line in a bid to have more involvement in the physical products in which AI is embedded.

英伟达还在扩展自身的产品线，以期更深入地参与到集成AI的实体产品中。

Last month at the CES technology trade show in Las Vegas, Huang unveiled a new tech platform for self-driving cars.

上个月在拉斯维加斯举行的CES科技展上，黄仁勋发布了一款面向自动驾驶汽车的新技术平台。

Huang said the open-source AI model, which the company is calling "Alpamayo," will bring reasoning to autonomous vehicles.

黄仁勋表示，这款被公司命名为“阿尔帕马约”的开源AI模型，将为自动驾驶汽车赋予推理能力。

Nvidia also said is was planning to launch a robotaxi service by next year in partnership with an unnamed partner.

英伟达还表示，计划在明年与一家未具名的合作伙伴共同推出无人驾驶出租车服务。

Nvidia chips have lead in the training of AI models, but it has faced of onslaught of competition in inference, the process whereby a trained model is applied to real-world data to generate answers through reasoning.

英伟达芯片在AI模型训练领域处于领先地位，但在推理领域却面临着激烈的竞争，推理是指将训练好的模型应用于现实世界数据，通过推理生成答案的过程。

During the fourth quarter, Nvidia acquired rival Groq in a $20bn deal that's expand its expertise in inference.

在第四季度，英伟达以200亿美元的交易收购了竞争对手Groq，以扩展其在推理技术方面的专业能力。