Nvidia’s stock closes at record after Google AI partnership

Nvidia shares rose 4.2% Tuesday to close at a record, after the chipmaker announced a partnership with Google that could expand distribution of its artificial intelligence technology.

The stock’s torrid run continued, as it’s now up 234% in 2023, making it by far the best performer in the S&P 500. Facebook parent Meta is second in the index, up 148%.

The record close comes less than a week after the company said quarterly revenue doubled from a year earlier and gave a forecast indicating that sales this period could rise 170% on an annual basis. The day after the better-than-expected earnings report, the stock climbed to a record intraday high of $502.66 before retreating in the afternoon.

Nvidia’s business is booming because its graphics processing units, or GPUs, are being gobbled up by cloud companies, government agencies and startups to train and deploy generative AI models like the technology underpinning OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

On Tuesday, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang appeared at a Google conference to tout an AI agreement between the two companies. Through the partnership, Google’s cloud customers will have greater access to technology powered by Nvidia’s powerful H100 GPUs.

“Our expanded collaboration with Google Cloud will help developers accelerate their work with infrastructure, software and services that supercharge energy efficiency and reduce costs,” Huang said in a blog post.

Nvidia’s GPUs are also available on competing cloud platforms from Amazon and Microsoft.

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