Chipmaker Nvidia overtakes Microsoft as world’s most valuable company

On Tuesday, Nvidia surpassed Microsoft as the world’s most valuable public company after the chipmaker’s shares rose by over 3.5%, boosting its market capitalization to $3.34 trillion. Microsoft leap-frogged Apple into second place a few days ago, and its market cap is currently at $3.32 trillion, whereas Apple’s is at $3.28 trillion.

Also read: Nvidia Surges Past $2 Trillion Mark Following Dell’s Upbeat Forecast

Nvidia’s shares have risen sharply since last year thanks to the growing demand for its processors, which are used to power AI models. On Tuesday, the stock climbed to an all-time of nearly $136. Year-to-date, the shares are up 180%. That compares to a 20% gain for Microsoft, which made an early investment into AI via OpenAI.

Nvidia sees surge in AI chip demand

The rise in Nvidia stock also comes after an announcement on Tuesday the California-based company has teamed up with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to build products that speed up the adoption of generative AI. The portfolio is called Nvidia AI Computing by HPE.

“Generative AI and accelerated computing are fueling a fundamental transformation as every industry races to join the industrial revolution,” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said in a statement.

He further added, “Never before have Nvidia and HPE integrated our technologies so deeply – combining the entire Nvidia AI computing stack along with HPE’s private cloud technology – to equip enterprise clients and AI professionals with the most advanced computing infrastructure and services to expand the frontier of AI.”

Nvidia specializes in making hardware mainly for video game consoles, GPUs for graphics cards, and processors for the AI industry. Its GPUs have also been deployed to mine cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Monero (XMR), and Zcash (ZEC).

Over the last few years, the processors have been widely used in the AI industry to run large language models, the technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT, and several other AI applications. Nvidia’s powerful A100 GPU, which reportedly cost $15,000 each in 2023, has been previously used by Microsoft to power advanced LLMs for its cloud customers.

Demand is not switching off, analysts say

A report released by research firm TrendForce in March last year revealed that the number of Nvidia’s graphics processing units that OpenAI’s GPT model needed to process training data in 2020 came to about 20,000. As ChatGPT continues to evolve, that figure is also expected to continue to grow, it said.

Also read: Tech firms form alliances to challenge Nvidia in AI chip market

Analysts expect this demand to drive Nvidia’s earnings going forward. In February, the company became the first chipmaker to hit a $2 trillion market capitalization after it reported record fourth-quarter results.

In May, Nvidia reported that first-quarter revenue for the fiscal year 2025 came in at $26 billion, up 260% from a year earlier. The financial results were better than what Wall Street analysts were looking for.

“Demand is showing no signs of switching off,” Ben Barringer, technology analyst at Quilter Cheviot, said after the results, as reported by the BBC.

Cryptopolitan Reporting by Jeffrey Gogo