The board of directors approved a share repurchase plan, with the total authorized amount for repurchases rising to $235 billion.
NVIDIA approves an increase of $150 billion to its share repurchase plan, bringing the total authorized repurchase amount to $235 billion.
Benefiting from the abundant cash brought about by the artificial intelligence boom, this chip giant has launched the largest stock repurchase program in U.S. history.
The chip company, headquartered in Santa Clara, California, announced on Monday that its board of directors has approved an additional $150 billion in share repurchase authorization, bringing the total authorized repurchase amount to $235 billion.
This authorization exceeds Apple's repurchase plan announced in May 2024; and just four months ago, NVIDIA's board of directors had recently increased the repurchase quota by an additional $80 billion.
NVIDIA is the world's largest designer and supplier of graphics processors and AI dedicated hardware for data centers, holding a dominant position in the market; its total market value exceeds $5.4 trillion, ranking it first among global corporations.
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang stated, "NVIDIA is benefiting from a once-in-a-generation platform transformation – namely the wave of artificial intelligence and accelerated computing. Our strong cash generation capability allows us to invest in the cutting-edge technologies that drive this change, as well as return capital to our shareholders."
After the announcement, NVIDIA's stock price rose by 3% on Monday morning.
Prior to the announcement of this repurchase, NVIDIA reported quarterly revenue of $96.2 billion as of July. The company expects its revenue to grow by 70% in the fiscal year 2028.
With the rapid expansion of its revenue scale, this chip manufacturer holds ample cash and engages in direct investments in startups. The targets of these investments include not only emerging cloud computing service providers that purchase its chips but also OpenAI and other AI model development enterprises.
NVIDIA disclosed in its presentation materials on Monday that its portfolio includes 13 listed companies and 229 unlisted startups; the investment returns from projects that have been exited have exceeded three times the initial capital invested.
The company plans to reinvest the excess free cash flow generated by its investments back to shareholders through stock repurchases and "steadily increasing dividends."
In addition to direct equity investments, NVIDIA has also utilized its balance sheet to provide backing guarantees for several financing transactions in the AI sector. The scale of these transactions has once again raised concerns among the market about NVIDIA falling into a cycle of financing.
NVIDIA announced last month that it would collaborate with Wall Street institutions to provide partial guarantees for data center financing of up to $500 billion, helping customers to afford to purchase their own chips. The company also agreed to provide backing support for the OpenAI data center project in Ohio.
NVIDIA stated that the AI industry is expanding at a very fast pace, and companies that are growing rapidly cannot do so without the support of NVIDIA to obtain capital.
Coulter Kress, the company's Chief Financial Officer, stated at the financial report conference call at the end of August: "We need NVIDIA to drive this growth momentum."
NVIDIA has signed long-term data center leasing agreements totaling approximately $20 billion to support the AI ecosystem; the company stated that it plans to “transfer” these leasing contracts to other enterprises to undertake them.
Additionally, on Monday, NVIDIA released a set of software tools to help developers test and deploy the AI agent, while keeping the agents within a secure environment. Following a series of incidents where AI agents got out of control in recent months, NVIDIA is stepping up its efforts to regulate the behavior of AI agents.
This tool, known as the NVIDIA Open Agent Security Platform, comes with multiple built-in functions that allow developers to continuously monitor and constrain the behavior of AI, ensuring that the agents adhere to established rules.
As this series of announcements is released, concerns about the security of AI continue to rise in the market. Recent incidents of AI models getting out of control have prompted industry insiders such as Sam奥特曼, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk to call for a slowdown in the development speed of AI technology.
