Nvidia Corp.’s market valuation fleetingly crossed the $1 trillion threshold on Tuesday after the chipmaker’s artificial intelligence prospects vaulted it into an elite club of just five American companies.
The stock rose as much as 7.7% early in the session, putting Nvidia well into $1 trillion territory, before retreating from the milestone during the afternoon. Alphabet Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. are the only other US businesses to have trillion-dollar valuations, and fewer than 10 companies globally have achieved the distinction.
Nvidia was up 3% to $401.11 as of the close in New York, putting its market capitalization at $990.7 billion.
No other company embodies Wall Street’s current obsession with AI more than Nvidia. It has become the world’s biggest maker of the specialized chips needed to power a new generation of AI products, surpassing Advanced Micro Devices Inc. and Intel Corp. in capability just as the viral success of ChatGPT has virtually every company around the world baking AI into its operations.
In a speech at the National Taiwan University over the weekend, Jensen Huang shared the philosophy that has brought his company to this moment: “Run, don’t walk,” he said. “Either you are running for food, or you are running from becoming food.”
Huang’s urgency — and his willingness to take risks that other rule-by-committee businesses dare not — is what compelled Nvidia, the Silicon Valley chipmaker he founded 30 years ago, to make big bets on artificial intelligence years before anyone else was taking it seriously. Today, it’s proving to be the company’s golden goose.
Nvidia’s shares have soared since last week when it gave an AI-fueled sales forecast that shattered Wall Street’s estimates. The stock continued to gain Tuesday after announcing several new artificial intelligence-related products over the weekend that touch on everything from robotics to gaming to advertising and networking. Huang also unveiled an AI supercomputer platform that will help tech companies create their own versions of ChatGPT.
