Nvidia on Tuesday became the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $3.34 trillion, surpassing Microsoft and Apple. Driven by the global AI craze and growing demand for AI processors, Nvidia is the first semiconductor company to ever become the world’s most valuable company.
Just a few months ago, Nvidia’s market capitalization was around $2.2 trillion, and the company was behind Microsoft and Apple but ahead of Saudi Aramco and Amazon in the top five largest companies by market capitalization. Nvidia then announced its financial results for the first quarter of fiscal year 2024, reporting revenue of $26.044 billion and achieving net income of $14.881 billion. Nvidia said it expects to earn $28 billion in the second quarter, significantly boosting investor confidence and the company’s market capitalization.
Nvidia co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang then traveled around the world to discuss the company’s AI capabilities as well as next-generation Nvidia Blackwell hardware, further boosting confidence. In 2024 alone, Nvidia’s stock rose over 160%, increasing its market capitalization by over $2 trillion. Fast forward to June 18, and Nvidia is now the most valuable company in the world by market capitalization.
Nvidia’s remarkable growth is driven by growing demand for its AI and HPC processors, particularly the Nvidia H100 and Nvidia H200. And its experience is broad: the company already has the Blackwell B200 product family, scheduled to launch later this year, and is currently preparing for that release — in addition to anticipated Blackwell RTX 50-series GPUs for client applications and professional workspaces. Thanks to Blackwell, Nvidia will offer not only processors and servers, but essentially entire data centers, which will likely escalate the company’s profits even further.
Analysts polled by Bloomberg we believe that the market capitalization of the most successful technology companies could exceed $4 trillion, which is truly a staggering level. For now, all three contenders to become the first $4 trillion company – Nvidia, Microsoft and Apple – are well-positioned to capitalize on the AI craze, albeit at different levels.
“We believe the race for the $4 trillion market cap in the technology industry will be a major topic next year between Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft,” wrote Daniel Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, in a note published by Bloomberg. Elon Musk tweeted that he wants to buy 300,000 Blackwell B200 GPUs as soon as they become available, and he won’t be lining up to buy them himself.
