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Nvidia blasts past Apple with $3 trillion valuation
AI revolution supercharges demand for US giant’s microchips
Nvidia has overtaken Apple to become the world’s second-most valuable company after surpassing a $3 trillion (£2.4 trillion) valuation.
The milestone comes amid soaring demand for the microchip maker’s artificial intelligence processors, which are key to systems such as ChatGPT.
Nvidia’s shares have climbed by more than 150pc this year alone and are up more than 600pc since November 2022, when ChatGPT was released.
The boom has made Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s Taiwanese-born founder and chief executive, one of the world’s wealthiest men. His net worth has soared from $13.8bn at the start of 2023 to $107bn today, putting him 13th in Bloomberg’s billionaires index.
Last week, Nvidia’s market value surpassed the entire FTSE 100 – the index of the London Stock Exchange’s 100 most valuable companies.
The company’s share price has climbed by almost 30pc in the last two weeks alone, driven by a sevenfold increase in its quarterly profits and plans for a stock split, which will divide its existing shares up ten-to-one on Friday.
Stock splits are seen as raising investor demand because it makes it cheaper to buy individual shares in a company. Nvidia’s shares today are worth $1,224 each.
Mr Huang received a rockstar-like reception this week at Taiwan’s Computex conference, a phenomenon that has been dubbed “Jensanity”. In one case, Mr Huang was seen signing a female fan’s top along her chest.
Nvidia’s shares rose by 5.2pc on Wednesday to put its market capitalisation at $3.009 trillion, compared to $3.003 trillion for Apple. Its value remains $142bn below Microsoft, the world’s most valuable listed company, which is worth $3.15 trillion.
The company’s rapid rise has been a major part of US stock markets reaching all time highs. Nvidia alone has accounted for more than a third of the S&P 500’s 13pc rise this year.
Nvidia’s graphics processing units, or GPUs, were originally designed for video games but have proven to be critical to artificial intelligence applications. Companies including Meta, Microsoft and Tesla are spending billions on Nvidia GPUs, which are seen as the clear market leader.