NVIDIA Corp. on Wednesday became the first company to reach a $5 trillion market valuation.
The artificial intelligence (AI) powerhouse’s meteoric rise – it topped a $4 trillion valuation just three months ago and crossed the $1 trillion threshold two years ago — underscores the fervor surrounding AI investments that have propelled U.S. markets to record highs this year.
More remarkably, NVIDIA’s $5 trillion market cap exceeds the combined valuations of all its major competitors, including AMD Inc., Intel Corp., Broadcom Inc., TSMC, Micron Technology Inc., ASML, Lam Research Corp., Qualcomm Inc., and Arm Holdings.
NVIDIA, whose shares have surged more than 50% this year and a staggering 1,500% over five years, has become the defining symbol of the AI boom. However, the rapid ascent has also sparked concerns about a potential bubble, with some economists drawing parallels to the dot-com frenzy of the late 1990s. (Addressing bubble concerns Tuesday, Huang defended the sector’s valuations, telling NBC News that AI companies are “generating real revenues” and selling profitable products.)
A surge in NVIDIA shares Wednesday followed company CEO Jensen Huang’s appearance Tuesday at the company’s annual AI conference in Washington, D.C., where he unveiled partnerships spanning from 5G network supplier Nokia Corp. to ride-sharing firm Uber Technologies Inc. Huang projected $500 billion in AI chip orders through next year.
Among the conga line of business partnerships and collaborations also announced Tuesday included pacts with ServiceNow Inc., Red Hat Inc., Check Point Software Technologies, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.
NVIDIA’s astounding spike in valuation is “very reasonable given its growth and trajectory,” Daniel Newman, CEO of The Futurum Group, said in a message. Though he doesn’t expect the company to reach projections of $500 billion in revenue through 2026, he deemed its growth “strongly intact.”
President Donald Trump fueled the NVIDIA euphoria late Tuesday, when he told reporters he would discuss NVIDIA’s Blackwell chip with Chinese President Xi Jinping during their Wednesday meeting. Blackwell is NVIDIA’s most powerful AI processor to date — Trump called it “super duper”— but sales to China face restrictions over national security concerns about advanced AI capabilities.
The Trump administration has sent mixed signals regarding limits on China’s access to cutting-edge AI chips, adding uncertainty to the geopolitical landscape surrounding the technology.
While baseball fans have rhapsodized over the skills of Shohei Ohtani during the World Series, longtime observers in Silicon Valley are marveling over NVIDIA’s achievements and ambitions in AI in terms of chips, robotics, infrastructure, quantum computing, and data centers.
For now, it is at the center of the AI universe.
