Nvidia reports record revenue as issues with Arm acquisition roll on

19 Aug 2021

Image: © Konstantin Savusia/Stock.adobe.com

While Nvidia continues to grapple with regulatory bodies over its Arm acquisition, it saw record earnings in Q2 of this year.

Nvidia reported its second-quarter earnings yesterday (18 August), coming in with record revenue of $6.51bn, up 15pc from the previous quarter and up 68pc from last year.

The US chipmaker also reported record revenue for both its gaming and data centre divisions. Gaming revenue came in at $3.06bn, up 85pc from the year prior, reflecting higher sales in GeForce GPUs and game-console system on chips (SoCs).

Its data centre revenue came in at $2.37bn, an increase of 35pc from last year and up 16pc from last quarter.

In the earnings update, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang highlighted some of the company’s tech developments.

“Nvidia’s pioneering work in accelerated computing continues to advance graphics, scientific computing and AI,” said Huang.

“Enabled by the Nvidia platform, developers are creating the most impactful technologies of our time – from natural language understanding and recommender systems, to autonomous vehicles and logistic centres, to digital biology and climate science, to metaverse worlds that obey the laws of physics.”

He spotlighted the Nvidia Omniverse, a virtual simulation platform that connects to other digital platforms, as well as the Nvidia Base Command and Fleet Command platforms. These were launched in Q2 to “develop, deploy, scale and orchestrate the AI workloads that run on the Nvidia AI enterprise software suite”, Huang said.

“With our new enterprise software, wide range of Nvidia-powered systems and global network of system and integration partners, we can accelerate the world’s largest industries racing to benefit from the transformative power of AI.”

While Huang has his eyes set on ambitious tech developments, Nvidia has been grappling with closing its $40bn acquisition of UK chipmaker Arm, which has encountered regulatory issues and competition investigations in different markets. Earlier this year, the UK intervened on the grounds of “national security issues”.

In her commentary on the second-quarter results, Nvidia CFO Colette Kress stated that the company expects the deal will go through, however.

“Although some Arm licensees have expressed concerns or objected to the transaction, and discussions with regulators are taking longer than initially thought, we are confident in the deal and that regulators should recognise the benefits of the acquisition to Arm, its licensees and the industry.”

Sam Cox was a journalist at Silicon Republic covering sci-tech news

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