Nvidia Corp dethroned Apple Inc as the world’s most valuable company on Friday following a record-setting rally in the stock, powered by insatiable demand for its specialized artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
Nvidia’s stock market value briefly touched US$3.53 trillion, slightly above Apple’s US$3.52 trillion, London Stock Exchange Group data showed.
Nvidia ended the day up 0.8 percent, with a market value of US$3.47 trillion, while Apple’s shares rose 0.4 percent, valuing the iPhone maker at US$3.52 trillion.
Photo: Reuters
In June, Nvidia briefly became the world’s most valuable company before it was overtaken by Microsoft Corp and Apple. The tech trio’s market capitalizations have been neck-and-neck for several months.
Microsoft’s market value stood at US$3.18 trillion, with its stock up 0.8 percent on Friday.
The Silicon Valley chipmaker is the dominant supplier of processors used in AI computing, and the company has become the biggest winner in a race between Microsoft, Alphabet Inc, Meta Platforms Inc and other heavyweights to dominate the emerging technology.
Known since the 1990s as a designer of processors for video games, Nvidia’s stock has risen about 18 percent so far this month, with a string of gains coming after OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, announced a funding round of US$6.6 billion.
Nvidia and other semiconductor stocks got a lift on Friday after data storage maker Western Digital Corp reported quarterly profit that beat analysts’ estimates, buoying optimism about data center demand.
“More companies are now embracing artificial intelligence in their everyday tasks and demand remains strong for Nvidia chips,” AJ Bell PLC investment director Russ Mould said.
“It is certainly in a sweet spot and so long as we avoid a big economic downturn in the United States, there is a feeling that companies will continue to invest heavily in AI capabilities, creating a healthy tailwind for Nvidia,” Mould said
Nvidia’s shares hit a record high on Tuesday, building on a rally from last week when Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, posted a 54 percent jump in quarterly profit driven by soaring demand for chips used in AI.
Meanwhile, Apple is struggling with tepid demand for iPhone sales in China, which slipped 0.3 percent in the third quarter, while sales of phones made by rival Huawei Technologies Co (華為) surged 42 percent.
Shares of Nvidia have surged nearly 190 percent so far this year as the boom in generative AI led to a series of blowout forecasts from Nvidia.
“The question is whether the revenue stream will last for a long time and will be driven by the emotion of investors rather than by any ability to prove or disprove the thesis that AI is overdone,” Cherry Lane Investments LLC partner Rick Meckler said.
“I think Nvidia knows that near term, their numbers are likely to be quite remarkable,” he added.
To many, Tatu City on the outskirts of Nairobi looks like a success. The first city entirely built by a private company to be operational in east Africa, with about 25,000 people living and working there, it accounts for about two-thirds of all foreign investment in Kenya. Its low-tax status has attracted more than 100 businesses including Heineken, coffee brand Dormans, and the biggest call-center and cold-chain transport firms in the region. However, to some local politicians, Tatu City has looked more like a target for extortion. A parade of governors have demanded land worth millions of dollars in exchange
An Indonesian animated movie is smashing regional box office records and could be set for wider success as it prepares to open beyond the Southeast Asian archipelago’s silver screens. Jumbo — a film based on the adventures of main character, Don, a large orphaned Indonesian boy facing bullying at school — last month became the highest-grossing Southeast Asian animated film, raking in more than US$8 million. Released at the end of March to coincide with the Eid holidays after the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan, the movie has hit 8 million ticket sales, the third-highest in Indonesian cinema history, Film
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co’s (TSMC, 台積電) revenue jumped 48 percent last month, underscoring how electronics firms scrambled to acquire essential components before global tariffs took effect. The main chipmaker for Apple Inc and Nvidia Corp reported monthly sales of NT$349.6 billion (US$11.6 billion). That compares with the average analysts’ estimate for a 38 percent rise in second-quarter revenue. US President Donald Trump’s trade war is prompting economists to retool GDP forecasts worldwide, casting doubt over the outlook for everything from iPhone demand to computing and datacenter construction. However, TSMC — a barometer for global tech spending given its central role in the
Alchip Technologies Ltd (世芯), an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) designer specializing in server chips, expects revenue to decline this year due to sagging demand for 5-nanometer artificial intelligence (AI) chips from a North America-based major customer, a company executive said yesterday. That would be the first contraction in revenue for Alchip as it has been enjoying strong revenue growth over the past few years, benefiting from cloud-service providers’ moves to reduce dependence on Nvidia Corp’s expensive AI chips by building their own AI accelerator by outsourcing chip design. The 5-nanometer chip was supposed to be a new growth engine as the lifecycle
RSS