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Nvidia, the artificial intelligence chip powerhouse, achieved a historic milestone on Wednesday by becoming the world's first $5 trillion company. This surge reflects continued investor confidence in AI's potential to drive a new era of innovation and economic growth.
The California-based tech giant's share price climbed 4.91 percent to $210.90 at the opening of Wall Street trading, propelling its market capitalization beyond the unprecedented $5 trillion mark. For context, this valuation now exceeds the GDP of nations like France or Germany, and is greater than the combined market caps of Tesla, Meta (Facebook), and Netflix.
Microsoft and Apple, the two other largest global market capitalizations, only just exceed $4 trillion in valuation each.
The surge in Nvidia's share price follows continued strong sales, a flurry of new deals -- including a partnership with Europe's Nokia announced on Tuesday -- as well as expectations that the company may soon regain access to China.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected in South Korea this week, where he will attend the sidelines of the APEC summit at which US President Donald Trump will meet his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, with issues related to AI development expected to be discussed. Nvidia chips are currently not sold in China due to a combination of Chinese government bans, national security concerns, and ongoing trade tensions between the United States and China. The Trump administration favors a more nuanced approach to selling AI chips to Beijing, but faces deep skepticism from China hawks across the US political spectrum who favor tougher bans on AI technology.
Nvidia has announced a series of partnerships in recent weeks, including an intention to invest up to $100 billion in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI over the coming years.
It also said it would invest $5 billion in struggling chip rival Intel, in response to the Trump administration's desire to bring back more manufacturing of semiconductors to the United States.
