As stock prices continue to rise at an astounding rate, the semiconductor giant’s market capitalization has reached $3.335 trillion.
Nvidia, the startup at the center of the artificial intelligence boom, has knocked Microsoft off the top spot to become the world’s most valuable company.
The chipmaker’s shares rose 3.5% to $135.58 on Tuesday, giving Nvidia a market capitalization of $3.335 trillion.
The feat comes just days after the Santa Clara, California-based company overtook Apple to become the world’s second-most valuable company.
The second and third-largest stocks, Microsoft and Apple, fell 0.45% and 1.1%, respectively.
The rally in Nvidia’s stock, which has propelled the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes to all-time highs, continues a winning streak for speculators at the company, whose graphics processing units, or GPUs, are crucial to AI development.
The company’s shares have soared nearly 182% this year alone after more than tripling in 2023, buoyed by robust demand for its chips from tech giants including Microsoft, Meta and Google.
Nvidia controls about 80% of the market for AI chips used in data centers, which are needed to run AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Since its stock market debut in 1999, Nvidia’s stock price has soared 591,078 percent.
According to the Kobeisi Letter, a capital markets newsletter, an investor who put $10,000 into the company in 1999 would now have shares worth $59,107,800.
For its first few decades, Nvidia focused primarily on making chips for computer games.
But in the 2000s, CEO Jensen Huang directed the company to invest heavily in developing GPUs for uses beyond gaming, so that it could take advantage of the rise of AI.
The company’s phenomenal growth has made Hwang one of the world’s richest people, with an estimated net worth of more than $117 billion, according to Forbes magazine.