A Breathtaking Record: NVIDIA Reports $81.6 Billion

Let's start with the numbers. On Wednesday, NVIDIA announced quarterly revenue of $81.6 billion — that's 26× more than in the first quarter of 2020 and $2.5 billion above analyst estimates. Operating earnings per share reached $1.87 versus the expected $1.77. And there's more: the company forecast next quarter's revenue at $91 billion.

Data centers, which power the training of models like GPT and Claude, generated $75.2 billion — over 92% of total revenue. NVIDIA also announced an $80 billion share buyback and increased its quarterly dividend from 1 cent to 25 cents per share.

CEO Jensen Huang stated during the analyst call that cumulative demand for the most advanced chips will reach "at least a trillion dollars" by the end of 2027. And he justified it simply: "If they don't have the compute power, they won't have the revenue." Huang also predicted that the world will have "billions of AI agents" that will deploy further sub-agents — and all of them will need compute power.

For Czech companies and developers, this means one thing: the prices of cloud AI services will go up, and access to the most powerful models will become increasingly expensive. The Czech National Bank has already invested millions of crowns in NVIDIA chips for its AI supervisory center — a trend that more and more institutions will follow.

Anthropic Is Growing Faster Than Zoom During COVID

The second shock came from Anthropic — the company behind the Claude model. According to the Wall Street Journal, the company is projecting revenue of $10.9 billion for the next quarter, which is more than double the previous quarter. For comparison: Zoom grew more slowly during the peak of the pandemic in 2020.

Anthropic's growth rate is unprecedented even by Silicon Valley standards. Jensen Huang remarked during NVIDIA's earnings call: "The fact that they can grow in one month by as much as some SaaS companies took a decade to achieve says something."

Claude is, by the way, becoming an increasingly interesting alternative to ChatGPT for Czech users — it offers a free tier, supports Czech, and is gaining popularity among Czech developers thanks to the Claude Code feature. The massive financial injection means Anthropic will keep accelerating development — Czech users can look forward to an increasingly capable AI assistant.

OpenAI: IPO and a Mathematical Breakthrough in a Single Day

The third event is a double announcement from OpenAI. The company behind ChatGPT is, according to the Wall Street Journal, preparing to go public within a few weeks — shortly after winning its legal battle with Elon Musk. OpenAI's IPO will likely be one of the most closely watched in the history of the tech sector.

And as if that wasn't enough: on the same day, OpenAI announced that one of its models solved a famous geometry problem that had eluded mathematicians for 80 years. In an emotional announcement video, OpenAI researchers admitted they couldn't sleep because of the implications of what the model had achieved.

In the Czech Republic, ChatGPT is by far the most used AI tool. Going public will likely lead to even more aggressive expansion — including the European market, where OpenAI is already testing ads. For Czech companies, this means that ChatGPT as a tool isn't going away — on the contrary, it will become even more ubiquitous.

SpaceX: A Space Company That Is Actually an AI Giant

The final and perhaps most surprising news: SpaceX has officially filed for an IPO (Form S-1). And the documents revealed that Musk's rocket company is, in reality, primarily an AI company.

Key numbers from the S-1: Anthropic pays SpaceX $1.25 billion per month (that's $15 billion annually) for access to computing infrastructure — specifically the Colossus and Colossus II supercomputers. The contract runs until May 2029. SpaceX's capital expenditures on AI amounted to $7.7 billion in the first quarter, while the space program received "only" $1 billion.

SpaceX further states in its materials that the total addressable market for AI reaches $26.5 trillion — $6 trillion more than China's GDP. It estimates the space business at "just" $370 billion.

Elon Musk holds 85.1% of voting rights, and his compensation package — tied to milestones such as building a permanent colony on Mars with a million inhabitants — could reach up to $737 billion. He would become the first trillionaire in history.

And What About Meta? Layoffs in the Shadow of the AI Boom

While the numbers from NVIDIA, Anthropic, and SpaceX soared to dizzying heights, Meta announced layoffs of 8,000 employees — to free up resources for AI investments. It thus joined Amazon, LinkedIn, Oracle, Workday, and other companies that have laid off thousands in recent months. The paradox of the AI age: record profits on one side and massive restructuring of the labor market on the other.

Ken Griffin, the billionaire head of the hedge fund Citadel, who back in January called AI "garbage," admitted on stage this week that he felt "pretty depressed" after seeing AI agents perform "extraordinarily highly skilled jobs" at his firm. "You can see it's going to have a dramatic impact on society," he said.

What This Means for the Czech Republic and Europe

Wednesday, May 20, is not just an American story. The European Union is responding to the AI boom on its own path — from the AI Act to building European AI infrastructure. The Czech Republic is not lagging behind: the Czech AI Factory in Ostrava is already operating as a national hub for European artificial intelligence, and the Czech National Bank runs its own AI supervisory center on NVIDIA chips.

The wave of IPOs — OpenAI, SpaceX, and likely Anthropic — however means that capital will flow primarily to American companies. Europe must accelerate its own investments if it doesn't want to remain merely a consumer of technologies developed by someone else.

For ordinary Czechs, this Wednesday has concrete consequences: free AI tools will come under increasing pressure, because companies need to generate profits for shareholders. ChatGPT is already testing ads, Claude is limiting free quotas, and premium features are getting more expensive. Those who don't learn to work with AI now will find it significantly harder — and more expensive — in a year.