Analysis: Nvidia Made A Lot More Money Than Intel, AMD Combined Last Quarter

Nvidia could finish its current fiscal year with revenue that is not only more than double what it made the previous year when it surpassed Intel in annual sales for the first time. It would also be 64 percent higher than the combined full-year revenues forecasted by Intel and AMD.

Nvidia earned nearly 75 percent more revenue than Intel and AMD combined in their recently completed quarters—another sign of how Nvidia has seized on its dominance in the fast-growing AI computing market to tower over its closest chip rivals.

As disclosed on Wednesday, Nvidia reported $35.1 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 94 percent year over year. With much of the company’s sales going through the channel, a good deal of partners likely benefited, including the system integrators and distributors who helped generate an estimated 10 percent or more of Nvidia’s revenue with a single, unnamed customer, according to its latest 10-Q filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Intel, on the other hand, reported 2.6 times less revenue than what Nvidia made during roughly the same period—$13.3 billion, which represented a 6 percent year-over-year decline—while AMD earned nearly half of what Intel did—$6.8 billion, which marked a record for the company and an 18 percent year-over-year increase.

Contrast this to five years ago when Intel was the leader of the pack in the third quarter with $19.2 billion in revenue, followed by Nvidia with $3 billion and AMD with $1.8 billion. By the end of their respective fiscal years (with Nvidia’s ending a month later in January), Intel finished with $72 billion, followed by Nvidia with $10.9 billion and AMD with $6.7 billion.

Based on the recently issued fourth quarter revenue forecasts for each company, the picture is expected to look very different by the end of their current fiscal years: Nvidia is expected to finish its 2025 fiscal year this January with a staggering $128.6 billion while Intel and AMD could end 2024 with $52.6 billion and $25.6 billion, respectively. (CRN’s 2024 full-year estimate for Intel is based on the midpoint of its fourth-quarter guidance.)

This means Nvidia could finish its current fiscal year with revenue that is not only more than double what it made the previous year, when the company managed to surpass Intel in annual sales for the first time. It would also be nearly 63 percent higher than the record $79 billion Intel made in revenue for 2021 and 64 percent higher than the combined full-year revenues that have been forecasted by Intel and AMD.

What’s allowed Nvidia to grow revenue so fast over the past couple years isn’t new. The company made early bets on the promise of accelerated computing with investments and acquisitions that allowed it to build out a comprehensive and integrated stack of chips, systems, software and services just in time for the generative AI revolution.

But the continuing high demand for Nvidia’s chips and systems—not to mention its software-as-a-service and support offerings, which now command an annual run rate of $1.5 billion, according to the company’s Wednesday earnings call—shows how there is still a massive appetite for its wares, reflecting the high hurdles Intel and AMD will need to clear to claim a decent chunk of the AI computing market.