Nvidia posts better-than-expected Q3 financial results

Nvidia reported stronger-than-expected third-quarter financial results posting adjusted earnings of $1.33 per share on revenue of $2.64 billion.

Nvidia's gaming revenue grew 25 percent year-over-year to $1.56 billion, making up the biggest portion of the company's top line. Data center chips were the biggest gainers, increasing 109 percent to $500 million. The stock was up nearly 2 percent in after-hours trading on Thursday, and is up more than 90 percent this year.

"We've been steadfast with the excitement of accelerated computing for datacenters and I think this is just the beginning of it all," CEO Jensen Huang said on its earnings call.

Nvidia, more than anyone, is probably the biggest gainer from the sudden explosion of applications requiring GPUs for their computation instead of the standard GPU. The company released its new gaming chips and announced its PX Pegasus automotive AI systems during the quarter.

In the past year, Nvidia’s stock has almost tripled, and as applications like computer vision and autonomous driving require a different kind of processor Nvidia has not only seen demand for GPUs explode, but also found ways to position itself as the company for AI hardware.

Just a couple of days back, Intel announced a partnership with AMD to work together on a chip for notebooks that combines Intel CPU and AMD GPU, which could potentially challenge Nvidia.

The company issued fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $2.65 billion, above analyst estimates of $2.44 billion.