The stock market darling on everyone's lips is Nvidia, which makes the processing chips that power everything from home computers to industrial machinery to cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology. On Thursday, the company stunned Wall Street with results that blew the roof off analysts' expectations, reporting $13.5bn in quarterly profits, $2bn higher than pundits had predicted. Its performance is being driven in particular by the AI boom, which has tripled the value of its shares this year and given it a market value of more than $1tn. California-based Nvidia is one of just five companies to have reached that milestone – along with Apple, Amazon, Microsoft and Google's owner, Alphabet – and the only one that isn't a household name. So why are its chips so hot, and what does the future hold?

The US chip-maker Nvidia has said cryptocurrencies do not "bring anything useful for society" despite the company's powerful processors selling in huge quantities to the sector. Michael Kagan, its chief technology officer, said other uses of processing power such as the artificial intelligence chatbot ChatGPT were more worthwhile than mining crypto. Nvidia never embraced the crypto community with open arms. In 2021, the company even released software that artificially constrained the ability to use its graphics cards from being used to mine the popular Ethereum cryptocurrency, in an effort to ensure supply went to its preferred customers instead, who include AI researchers and gamers. Kagan said the decision was justified because of the limited value of using processing power to mine cryptocurrencies.

SoftBank Group has quietly amassed a $4 billion stake in Nvidia, making it the fourth-largest shareholder in the graphics chip-maker, according to people familiar with the situation. SoftBank, which just closed its Vision Fund, disclosed it owned an unspecified amount of Nvidia stock when it announced $93 billion of commitments to the technology investment fund Saturday. A holding of 4.9 percent, just under the amount that would require a regulatory disclosure in the U.S., would be worth about $4 billion. A stake in Nvidia fits with SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son's plans to become the biggest investor in technology over the next decade, with bets on emerging trends such as artificial intelligence. Under its founder, Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia has become one of the leaders of the charge by chip-makers to provide the underpinnings of machine intelligence in everything from data centers to automobiles.