Chip sales for data centers, where most A.I. training is accomplished, are now the company’s biggest business. Revenue from that business grew 171 percent to $10.3 billion in the second period, Nvidia said.

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, said the rush to add generative A.I. capability has become a fundamental imperative to corporate chiefs and boards of directors. Nvidia’s only limitation at the moment, he said, is its struggle to supply enough chips — a gap that may create opportunities for major chip companies such as Intel and Advanced Micro Devices and start-ups such as Groq.

Nvidia’s roaring sales contrasted sharply with the fortunes of some of its chip industry peers, which have been hurt by soft demand for personal computers and data center servers used for general-purpose tasks. Intel said in late July that second-quarter revenue fell 15 percent, though the results were better than Wall Street had expected. Revenue at Advanced Micro Devices fell 18 percent in the same period.

Some analysts believe that spending on A.I.-specific hardware, such as Nvidia’s chips and systems that use them, is drawing money away from spending on other data center infrastructure. IDC, a market research firm, estimates that cloud services will increase their spending on server systems for A.I. by 68 percent over the next five years.

While Google, Amazon, Meta, IBM and others have also produced A.I. chips, Nvidia today accounts for more than 70 percent of A.I. chip sales and holds an even bigger position in training generative A.I. models, according to the research firm Omdia.