Nvidia started out as a humble graphics card maker. Now it’s tapping into the tech industry’s obsession with artificial intelligence to reach absurd modern heights. The company added $329 billion to its market capitalization on Wall Street today after a record day of stock trading, Bloomberg reports.
Most people know Nvidia as the maker of the chip that powers their Android phones, Nintendo Switches and top-of-the-line PC gaming rigs. It first got its huge break when it designed the GPU for Microsoft’s original Xbox and helped Sony design the graphics processor for the PlayStation 3. For years, the company has been putting huge hunks of metal on stage with plastic fans to wow gamers with improvements they couldn’t afford. Now it has quickly become something completely different.
Nvidia shares were trading below $15 a share in early 2023. Less than two years later, they topped $100. What’s changed? Microsoft and others are embracing GPUs to fuel their AI ambitions. It seemed the fever might have died down amid a modern wave of skepticism about what generative AI and machine learning will actually do, but then Microsoft has announced that it intends to continue investing billions to AI computing server farms, and Nvidia shares soared higher than most companies are worth in less than eight hours. Let’s recall some previous records:
$329 billion is more than Netflix, Coca-Cola and Bank of America. It’s worth eight Electronic Arts and 12 Take-Two, whose subsidiary Rockstar Games publishes Grand Theft Auto VI next year. Nvidia isn’t worth more than it’s ever been — it peaked at more than $3 trillion last month — but this one-day swing underscores how out of touch the company is with either its recent history or current market reality OpenAI is reportedly losing billions. As Meta moves from VR to the AI chip arms race, and others desperately try to catch up, Nvidia has quickly become the center of the technology and financial universe.
“These violent delights have violent endings.” Perhaps we are witnessing the first of many transformations before Nvidia’s final form. Perhaps it will be the first true megacorporation in a future cyberpunk dystopia, or perhaps some plates will stop spinning and start cracking, and the company will return to releasing hard-to-find Gundam– branded graphics cards for $4,000 gaming rigs that allow you to play Spirit of Tsushima in 4K at 120 fps. It’s never a good sign when the numbers get so crazy they stop meaning anything.
