The American chip giant has defied scepticism about the vast sums of money being spent on AI technology and surpassed analysts' forecasts as sales for the final three months of its financial year increased by 73 per cent compared to 12 months earlier.

Nvidia boss Jensen Huang said: "Computing demand is growing exponentially. Our customers are racing to invest in AI compute - the factories powering the AI industrial revolution and their future growth."

The firm is the world's most valuable publicly-traded company, with a stock market value of around $4.8 trillion.

It has become a key player in the buildout of AI infrastructure, providing sophisticated chips to leading AI model developers such as OpenAI and Meta.

Gene Munster, manager partner at Deepwater Asset Management, explained that the buildout looks set to continue for a long time to come.

He wrote on the social media platform X: "AI is accelerating faster than people not using these tools can grasp."

Shares in Nvidia dropped earlier this month after the chip firm pulled back from its proposed $100 billion investment in OpenAI - the company behind ChatGPT - although Huang stressed that this was "never a commitment".

He said: "They invited us to invest up to $100 billion and of course, we were, we were very happy and honoured that they invited us, but we will invest one step at a time."

However, a bullish Huang described OpenAI as "one of the most consequential companies of our time" and confirmed Nvidia would participate in its current funding round - just not with a $100 billion cheque.