Nvidia second-quarter sales likely to double, even a slight miss may hurt shares

Aug 26 (Reuters) – Nvidia  is likely to report on Wednesday that its second-quarter revenue more than doubled. But investors used to its blockbuster results will be expecting even more from the artificial intelligence chip giant.

A beat or a miss on Wall Street expectations could either stoke or shatter an AI rally on Thursday, a day after Nvidia reports earnings for the May-July period.

The company’s shares have surged more than 150% this year, adding $1.82 trillion to its market value and lifting the S&P 500 

to new highs.The stock is valued at about 37 times its forward earnings, compared with an average of around 29 for the top six tech companies on the benchmark index that includes the chipmaker

Tech heavyweights, including Microsoft 
, which are spending heavily to build out their AI infrastructure, have been buying Nvidia’s powerful graphic processing units that allow large amounts of computing quickly. These chips are difficult to replace in present-day datacenters, which has sharply boosted Nvidia’s fortunes..