Nvidia continues to ride the AI tech wave. The Santa Clara-based semiconductor and graphics card producer has surpassed Apple as the largest company by market cap, reaching beyond the $3.4 trillion mark with a 2.85% climb in value on Tuesday.
Apple was the first company to reach a $1 trillion and then a $2 trillion market cap. Nvidia previously overtook Apple in June before slipping over the summer. Microsoft, ranked third with a market cap close to $3.1 trillion, is a major customer of Nvidia GPUs to support its partnership with OpenAI as well as its own AI ambitions.
Nvidia has been Wall Street’s success story, driven by the widespread adoption of AI over the past two years. Nvidia’s microchips and processors power a large portion of the computing behind leading AI companies, such as OpenAI and their popular ChatGPT large language model. Nvidia is the dominant supplier of GPUs, which are essential in developing and deploying advanced AI software like ChatGPT.
Investor enthusiasm for this market sector has driven Nvidia’s market cap upward. Its stock is now up more than 2,700% over the past five years, and revenue has more than doubled in each of the past five quarters, tripling in three of them.
S&P Dow Jones announced last week that Nvidia will join the Dow Industrial Average on Friday, replacing longtime rival Intel and joining Apple in the blue-chip index.
The recent climb is likely related to investor speculation around the upcoming election, as both candidates—particularly Donald Trump—have expressed the need for policy changes around AI and cryptocurrency.
Additionally, there is speculation about Nvidia’s upcoming announcement of the RTX 50-Series “Blackwell,” which is widely expected to be released soon, with some predicting a January 2025 launch.
Nvidia is scheduled to release its quarterly report on November 20, with revenue growth expected to remain strong but somewhat weaker than analysts had projected, similar to Apple’s recent report.