NVIDIA is now the most valuable publicly traded company in the world.
Nvidia has surpassed Microsoft and Apple to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.
The graphics processing and AI chip giant’s current market capitalization is $3.34 trillion, slightly ahead of Microsoft’s $3.32 trillion and Apple’s $3.29 trillion.
Nvidia’s stock is currently trading around $135 as of this writing, following a 10-for-1 stock split that went into effect in early June. Before the split, Nvidia’s stock traded around $1,200.
The decision to initiate a stock split was made in an attempt to include Nvidia in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, a weighted index that favors companies whose stock prices are not extremely high to prevent one company from skewing the average too much.
Nvidia’s humble beginnings
Founded in 1991 as a gaming company specializing in producing graphics cards for high-performance video games, NVIDIA is now focused on laying the technological foundation for the era of artificial intelligence.
Related: NVIDIA surpasses Apple to become world’s second most valuable company.
The company saw increased demand for graphics processors during the GPU mining era of cryptocurrencies, which began around 2010 and ended with the introduction of application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for proof-of-work cryptocurrency mining.
AI arms race
Nvidia’s powerful graphics processors have become the choice of industry giants such as OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and even Microsoft when looking to develop artificial intelligence systems and infrastructure.
The chipmaker reported strong first-quarter results, with sales of $26 billion in the current quarter. More specifically, Nvidia generated $22.6 billion in data center revenue in the first quarter.
Following the results, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang confirmed that the company will launch a new artificial intelligence chipset every year as part of the modern industrial revolution that will impact every sector of the global economy.
Previously, Nvidia had committed to releasing new versions of its advanced microprocessors every two years. Ampere was released in 2020, Hopper was released in 2022, and the Blackwell architecture was released in 2024.
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