Nvidia Corp. was already the world’s most valuable semiconductor company. It has now become the first computer chip company to reach a market capitalization of $3 trillion.
Shares of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company are up roughly 147% this year, adding about $1.8 trillion as insatiable demand for chips used to power artificial intelligence tasks skyrockets. On Wednesday, the stock rose 5.2% to a record $1,224.40, pushing its market value to more than $3 trillion and overtaking Apple Inc.
The last time Nvidia was worth more than Apple was in 2002, five years before the first iPhone was released. At the time, both companies were worth less than $10 billion each.
Nvidia has shown no signs of slowing down or letting rivals catch up; The company’s chief executive Jensen Huang said the company plans to upgrade its so-called AI accelerators every year. Wednesday’s stock rally boosted his fortune by more than $5 billion to $107.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
The rise of generative artificial intelligence is a new industrial revolution and Nvidia expects to play a major role in the transition of the technology to personal computers, Huang told the audience in a keynote address at National Taiwan University.
“We’re seeing this big shift as in the early innings,” said Angelo Zino, senior equity analyst at CFRA Research.
After the CEO’s keynote, Zino said he likes “improved visibility” and sees “more momentum on the GPU/CPU/network side leading to consensus estimates.”
The company has arguably been the biggest beneficiary of the massive flood of AI spending, helping it enter the race for the title of world’s most valuable company. The chipmaker continues to lag behind Microsoft Corp. by market value, but with shares falling, Wall Street sees it as only a matter of time before Nvidia overtakes it.
Apple has struggled this year with the tech giant’s shares under pressure from concerns about declining demand for iPhones in China and European Union fines. The company’s stock only recently turned positive for 2024 as investor sentiment toward the iPhone maker slowly improves.
© 2024 Bloomberg LP
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and was auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
