Shares of the artificial intelligence networking chip company Astera Labs Inc. were flying high in extended trading today, rising more than 22% on the back of a solid earnings beat and strong guidance for the current quarter.

The chipmaker reported third-quarter earnings before certain costs such as stock compensation of 23 cents per share on sales of $113.1 million in the quarter. Revenue rose 206% from a year earlier, to $113.1 million.

The numbers were solid, with Wall Street analysts calling for earnings of just 17 cents per share on sales of $97.5 million.

However, Astera didn’t quite make much impact on its bottom line. It reported a net loss of $7.59 million in the quarter, compared with a $7.54 million loss in the year-ago period.

AI is all the rage in the technology industry now, so it makes sense that Astera is reaping the rewards. The Santa Clara, California-based company manufactures and sells data center chips that are used by all three big cloud infrastructure providers – Amazon Web Services Inc., Google LLC and Microsoft Corp.

The chips are designed to extend the range of data center networking cables, which are used to link together clusters of AI servers, so they can be used to tackle higher-performance workloads. In addition, Astera Labs makes modules that enable processors to quickly transfer data to and from memory to boost their performance.

Astera Chief Executive Jitendra Mohan (pictured) said the company delivered a fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue, up 47% on a sequential basis from the prior quarter.

“Our business has now entered a new growth phase with multiple product families ramping across AI platforms based upon both third-party GPUs and internally developed AI accelerators,” he said. “We are cementing our position as a critical part of AI connectivity infrastructure, delivering increased value to our hyperscaler customers.”

“Astera Labs had a great quarter, fueled by the need of enterprises to run their data centers more efficiently to support their growing AI workloads,” said Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. “It grew almost 50% quarter-over-quarter and by more than 200% year-over-year. It’s still running at a loss, but if it keeps growing the way it has been, it could well turn over a profit by the end of the current quarter.”

Looking ahead, Astera had more good news for investors, saying that it’s anticipating fourth-quarter earnings of between 25 and 26 cents per share, which is well ahead of the Street’s target of 18 cents per share.

In terms of revenue, Astera is shooting for sales of between $126 million and $130 million, versus the Street’s $107.9 million consensus estimate.

During the quarter, Astera strengthened its chip portfolio with the launch of its new Scorpio Smart Fabric Switches, the next generation of its silicon for linking AI infrastructure. In addition, the company became a member of the Ultra Accelerator Link Consortium, saying it intends to join the community effort to develop open-source UALink technology for high-speed AI accelerator connectivity.

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