New York, Feb 22 (IANS): US stocks soared higher on Thursday after a strong earnings report from tech giant Nvidia bolstered investor optimism on Wall Street, a media report said.

The blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 278 points, or 0.7 per cent. The S&P 500 gained 1.6 per cen%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was 2.4 per cent higher, CNN reported.

The S&P 500 hit a record high during morning trading on the pop in big tech and the Nasdaq is tracking towards a new all-time high as well, the report said.

Nvidia, one of the largest companies on Wall Street, led gains after reporting extraordinary earnings growth, fuelled by the artificial intelligence boom.

Profits of the chipmaker grew to nearly $12.3 billion in the three months ended January 28 -- up from $1.4 billion in the year-ago quarter, a gain of 769 per cent year-over-year and even stronger growth than Wall Street analysts had expected.

That result helped bring the company’s full-year profits up more than 580 per cent from the year earlier, CNN reported.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement on Wednesday evening that generative AI has now “hit the tipping point".

“Demand is surging worldwide across companies, industries and nations,” he said, CNN reported.

Shares of the stock were 15.3 per cent higher in morning trading, a reversal from earlier in the week when the company logged its worst day since October last year.