Nvidia reported a 48.4 percent jump in quarterly revenue, helped by demand for its graphics chips and its diversification into areas such as self-driving systems and artificial intelligence.

The company also forecast revenue of $1.95 billion, plus or minus 2 percent, for the current quarter.

Revenue from Nvidia's gaming business, which includes the GeForce graphics card series, rose nearly 50 percent to $1.03 billion in the first quarter. The business accounted for 53 percent of the company's total revenue in the quarter.

Nvidia has been able to avoid the downturn in the PC market by focusing on the development of high-end graphics cards that command premium prices.

Data center revenue more than doubled in the first quarter to $409 million, handily beating analysts' estimates of $318.2 million, according to FactSet.

Revenue in Nvidia's automotive business, which produces the DRIVE PX 2 self-driving system used by Tesla, reported a roughly 24 percent rise to $140 million.

"The AI revolution is moving fast and continuing to accelerate," said Jensen Huang, founder and chief executive officer of NVIDIA. "NVIDIA's GPU deep learning platform is the instrument of choice for researchers, internet giants and startups as they invent the future.

"Our Datacenter GPU computing business nearly tripled from last year, as more of the world's computer scientists engage deep learning. One industry after another is awakening to the power of GPU deep learning and AI, the most important technology force of our time," he said.

The company's net income rose to $507 million in the quarter ended April 30, from $208 million a year earlier.

Nvidia's revenue increased to $1.94 billion from $1.31 billion.