Graphics card giant Nvidia made history on Wednesday when the company became the first publicly traded company ever to exceed four trillion dollars in market value. The milestone was reached when the stock rose to $164.42 during trading on July 9.
The California-based tech company has experienced a meteoric rise driven by its dominant position in AI chip manufacturing. Over the past five years, the stock has risen by a full 1,460 percent, while this year's increase stands at nearly 18 percent.
Nvidia's success is based on the company's near-monopolistic control over the market for AI processors. The company's GPU chips form the backbone of machine learning, data centers, and large language models like ChatGPT.
The company's chips have become indispensable for tech giants Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Alphabet, all of which are investing billions in AI infrastructure. This has made Nvidia one of the main winners in the ongoing AI revolution.
Jensen Huang's wealth explodes
The stock surge has had a dramatic impact on co-founder and CEO Jensen Huang's personal wealth. According to Bloomberg estimates, his net worth is now $142 billion, an increase of more than $25 billion this year alone.
Huang owns approximately 3.5 percent of Nvidia, making him the company's largest individual shareholder. The wealth increase places him among the world's ten richest people, with his fortune closely tied to Nvidia's stock price.
Heaviest weight in S&P 500
Nvidia now has the highest weighting in the broad US stock index S&P 500, having surpassed both Apple and Microsoft. The breakthrough has led to optimism for continued growth, with some analysts predicting that the market value could rise further.
Loop Capital's Ananda Baruah sees Nvidia at the "forefront" of the next "golden wave" for generative AI and estimates that the company could reach a market value of over six trillion dollars within a few years.
Nvidia's historic success reflects the broader AI euphoria that has gripped financial markets, where investors are betting that artificial intelligence will reshape the entire economy over the coming decades.
