Nvidia co-founder, president and CEO Jensen Huang highlighted virtual assistants as a future revenue opportunity during its fiscal Q3 2022 earnings call, predicting the services will proliferate globally within five years.

Huang noted strong interest in Nvidia’s Omniverse Avatar gave him confidence of soon deriving revenue from the technology platform, which can be used to create virtual humans capable of understanding and speaking in natural language.

The executive sees opportunities for the platform in retail, digital twinning and 3D collaboration between remote workers.

Nvidia CFO Colette Kress explained more than 700 companies including BMW, Ericsson, Lockheed Martin and Sony Pictures are evaluating it, with more than 70,000 downloads of a beta version launched 11 months ago.

Huang asserted Nvidia is well positioned to ride out global supply chain disruption: “We have secured guaranteed supply, very large amounts of it…from the world’s leading foundry in substrate and packaging”.

Kress noted networking “revenue was impacted as demand outstripped supply” during the quarter, which ended on 31 October.

The company’s automotive business was also hurt as supply constraints negatively impacted sales of AI chips for in-vehicle functions, though the unit’s overall revenue grew 8 per cent year-on-year.

Kress acknowledged ongoing regulatory challenges around a proposed acquisition of UK-based chip designer Arm, explaining Nvidia is in talks with the US Federal Trade Commission regarding its concerns.

Nvidia’s net income grew 84 per cent year-on-year to $2.5 billion, on revenue of $7.1 billion, 50 per cent higher.

Gaming revenue grew 42 per cent and data centre 55 per cent.