Nvidia Corp’s relentless rally has propelled the semiconductor giant’s market capitalization over its mega-cap tech peers, helping it clinch the title of the world’s most valuable company as the popularity of artificial intelligence (AI) applications continues to soar.
The stock rose 3.5 percent to close at US$135.58 on Tuesday, putting the company’s market value at about US$3.3 trillion and catapulting it over those of Microsoft Corp and Apple Inc.
The top stocks have jockeyed all month for the pole position, with Nvidia finally edging past its big-tech peers.
Photo: AFP
Earlier in the month, Nvidia capped Apple by market value for the first time since 2002 and the two went back and forth in rankings in the past few days. Last week, Apple also overtook Microsoft to trade in the top spot briefly.
The ranking is yet another reminder that AI is the top focus of many investors. Nvidia is seen as the biggest and earliest beneficiary of the technology as it dominates the market with its highly sought-after chips that help power data centers running complex computing tasks required by AI applications.
Demand for its H100 accelerators is surging and helped drive up the chipmaker’s sales by more than 125 percent last year.
Microsoft is also seen as an early AI winner given its investment and partnership with OpenAI, which created the ChatGPT application.
Shares of Apple this week rallied after the iPhone maker finally unveiled its plan for using the technology.
“We believe over the next year the race to US$4 trillion market cap in tech will be front and center between Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft,” Wedbush Securities Inc analyst Daniel Ives wrote in a note.
Nvidia’s surging stock price has made its cofounder and chief executive officer, Jensen Huang (黃仁勳), one of the world’s richest people.
His net worth has climbed nearly US$75 billion since the beginning of the year to US$119 billion, putting him in 12th place on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
That is the biggest gain among his billionaire peers.
Investors, alongside Huang, say that Nvidia is more than just a chipmaker.
“They’re not just selling chips, they’re selling systems,” Baron Capital Inc vice president and portfolio manager Michael Lippert said in an interview, citing the company’s proprietary software and development ecosystem.
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