Nvidia surpasses Microsoft, Apple to become the world's most valuable company

Nvidia, a company known to gamers worldwide for its graphics chips, is now worth more than both Microsoft and Apple. Nvidia shares closed up 3.6% on June 18, bringing its market capitalization to $3.34 trillion, surpassing Microsoft ($3.32 trillion). Earlier this month, Nvidia hit the $3 trillion mark for the first time, also becoming the runner-up to Apple.

Nvidia shares rose more than 170% in 2024 and continued to reach new highs when it reported first-quarter results in May. Since the end of 2022, the chipmaker's shares have increased more than ninefold, coinciding with the rise of artificial intelligence technology.

Also on June 18, Apple shares fell 1.1%, reducing its capitalization to $3.29 trillion.

Nvidia dominates about 80% of the market for AI chips used in data centers, a booming business as OpenAI, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and others race to buy the chips needed to build AI models and run increasingly large workloads.

In its most recent quarter, Nvidia’s data center revenue jumped 427% from a year earlier to $22.6 billion, accounting for about 86% of the company’s total revenue. Founded in 1991, Nvidia spent its first few decades as a hardware company selling chips to gamers. It also developed cryptocurrency mining chips and sold cloud gaming packages.

But over the past two years, Nvidia’s stock has skyrocketed as Wall Street has recognized that its technology is the driving force behind the AI ​​boom. The boom has helped boost the fortune of founder and CEO Jensen Huang to about $117 billion, making him the 11th richest person in the world, according to Forbes.

Microsoft shares are up about 20% this year. The tech giant has also benefited from AI after taking a major stake in OpenAI and integrating the startup’s models into its most important products, including Office and Windows.

Microsoft is one of the biggest buyers of Nvidia chips, which power its Azure cloud service, and recently launched a new generation of laptops designed to run the Copilot+ AI model.

Over the years, the position of the world's most valuable company has been traded between Apple and Microsoft, with Nvidia being the "new kid".