(New York) The processor specialist Nvidia took off by more than 20% on Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange, the day after the publication of very ambitious forecasts, based on the boom in artificial intelligence.

Around 10:45 a.m. (Eastern time), the title of the group from Santa Clara in California took 24.68%, which allowed Nvidia to approach the trillion dollars of market capitalization, a very closed circle which does not currently has only five members, including four American technological flagships.

Founded thirty years ago by Taiwanese-American engineer Jen-Hsun “Jensen” Huang, this little-known company initially saw its future in video games.

It has thus developed graphics processors (GPUs) intended to improve the quality of images for gamers.

These chips have a computing capacity much greater than that of a conventional computer, a potential that quickly interested developers of artificial intelligence (AI), greedy in data processing.

Some of these GPUs cost tens of thousands of dollars each.

On Wednesday, after trading, Nvidia reported results above expectations, but above all published an astronomical forecast for its second quarter, which would represent an increase of 64% compared to the same quarter of 2022.

During the conference call presenting the results, Jensen Huang explained that the world of data processing centers, essential to remote computing (cloud), is undergoing a major transition and a technological upgrade, to face in particular to the new requirements of AI.

The manager estimated that the investments to be made could reach a trillion dollars in the years to come, of which Nvidia intends to capture a significant part.

“We have competition all over the place,” Jensen Huang acknowledged, but “we are the least expensive solution” for companies that want to improve their data processing capabilities.

Nvidia does not just sell processors and offers to design and assemble “data centers” from scratch, recalled the emblematic boss of the group, known for his relaxed appearance and his taste for leather jackets.

The Californian group is among the best placed to take advantage of the current craze for so-called generative AI, i.e. capable of creating content without human intervention on request in everyday language, thanks to large databases. .

“In 22 years of tech and large-cap coverage, we have never seen a forecast of this magnitude, confirming that AI monetization […] is well underway,” Wedbush analysts commented. Safeties, in a note.