Nvidia surge results in historic $1tn market valuation

Nvidia became the first chipmaker to achieve a $1tn market valuation on Tuesday, as excitement over artificial intelligence technology has led to a massive advance in the stock.

Shares gained as much as 7.7 per cent, and it last traded with a market capitalisation of $1.01tn. The stock has soared by about 180 per cent this year. In contrast, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index has risen by about 41 per cent in 2023, touching its highest intraday on Monday since February 2022.

Nvidia and AI

Nvidia has powered past other semiconductor companies as it is the world’s biggest maker of the specialised chips needed to power a new generation of AI products, one of the biggest investment themes on Wall Street.

Announced at #COMPUTEX2023: The #NVIDIADGX GH200 #AI Supercomputer connects 256 Grace Hopper Superchips into a massive, 1-Exaflop, 144TB GPU for giant models powering #generativeAI, recommender systems, and data processing. Learn more now: https://t.co/dyfz5WJq1M pic.twitter.com/eSEPBg0bMs

— NVIDIA Data Center (@NVIDIADC) May 30, 2023

Not only has it trounced the performance of other components of the index — it has done roughly twice as well as the next-best performer, Advanced Micro Devices Inc., up 93 per cent — but it has vastly eclipsed them in size. The second-biggest component of the semiconductor index is Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, which has a market capitalisation of more than $530 bn. In third place is Broadcom, valued at just over $360 bn.

Fewer than 10 stocks have ever topped the $1 tn threshold, and with Nvidia’s milestone, it joins Alphabet, Amazon, Microsoft among US companies currently trading above this level. Both Apple and Microsoft are valued above $2 tn.