Nvidia's Data Center business is booming, up more than 400% since last year to $18.4 billion in fourth-quarter sales

Nvidia's Data Center business just logged $18.4 billion in fourth-quarter sales, underscoring how the computer chip giant continues to benefit from the current boom in artificial intelligence.

As part of Nvidia's fourth-quarter earnings that were released Wednesday, the company said its data center unit grew 409% from the $3.62 billion it reported during the same period in the previous year. Analysts were expecting Nvidia's data center unit to record $17.06 billion in sales for its fiscal fourth quarter.

Investors are closely watching Nvidia's Data Center business, which includes the company's H100 graphics cards that are widely used to power generative AI apps such as OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Since OpenAI debuted ChatGPT in November 2022, tech giants such as Alphabet and Meta and high-profile startups including Anthropic and Cohere have increasingly released more capable versions of their respective large language models that require enormous amounts of computing power.

Indeed, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in January that the social networking giant's computing infrastructure will include 350,000 H100 graphics cards by the end of 2024, indicating that Meta is spending billions of dollars on Nvidia's popular computer chips as part of its artificial intelligence efforts.

Nvidia's data center unit has blossomed, particularly over the past three quarters. It's the current market leader for supplying computer chips used for AI research and products.

Here's a look at Nvidia's data center unit sales since the company's fiscal third quarter 2023, which ended about a month before OpenAI released ChatGPT:

Watch: Nvidia's well-positioned to sell into a supply constrained market

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