Nvidia is now the most valuable company in the world – after unbelievable 12-month run

Why it matters: Nvidia's role as the provider of most of the advanced hardware powering the AI boom has seen it become the second most-valuable company in the world. Team Green's market cap had surpassed the $3 trillion mark earlier this month but after a stock split and subsequent increases on its price, it's now valued at over $3.34 trillion, putting it just above Microsoft and Apple.

Nvidia's shares are up another 3.5% today, closing at $135.58. The company's share price has increased by more than 3,400% over the past five years and 181% this year alone.

With a market cap of $3.34 trillion, Nvidia has joined the very exclusive $3 trillion club alongside Apple ($3.29 trillion) and Microsoft ($3.32 trillion). Bloomberg notes that the last time Nvidia was worth more than Apple was in 2002, five years before the first iPhone was released. Both companies' market valuations were less than $10 billion at the time.

What's especially impressive is that Nvidia only passed the $2 trillion valuation milestone in February 2024, less than a year after it hit $1 trillion, in May 2023. It means the company's market value has skyrocketed another $1 trillion in just over three months.

Nvidia's soaring share price has seen CEO Jensen Huang, who owns 3.79% of the company, continue to rise up the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index. He sat in 18th place in May with a net worth of $80.5 billion. Today, Huang is in 12th position with a fortune of $115 billion.

The enormous demand for Nvidia's GPUs from companies going all-in on AI (I.e., all of them) saw its first-quarter sales hit $26 billion, more than three times what it earned during the same period a year earlier. In the high-end AI chip market, it's estimated that Nvidia holds a market share of between 70% to 95%.

Huang announced at Computex that Nvidia's roadmap for its core GPUs is taking on an accelerated pace. While big architectural changes are likely to continue at a rate of every two years, Nvidia is now moving to make important product enhancements every year. Blackwell Ultra is set to arrive next year, followed by Rubin in 2026 and Rubin Ultra in 2027.

Permalink to story:

Nvidia is now the most valuable company in the world – after unbelievable 12-month run

Wow, nvidia's market cap is worth more than $3 trillion... who knows how long it will increase..
but if it falls, it will take a long time to touch the ground.. and it will definitely hurt..

On one hand, I have no doubt that Nvidia will always be one of the most skeezy companies out there, or at least for the foreseeable future.

On the other, I bought an absolute ton of their stock Dec of 99 after it was clear the GeForce 256 was taking off. For .88 cents a share, and continued to buy for a few more years, and a boat load more after 3Dfx filed for bankruptcy in Oct of 2002, for $1.01 per share.
I still have it all.

Now, the point of all this.
To young investors, and soon to be investors, don't let your opinion of a company, or even worse, someone else's opinion cloud your judgement. Many of those types are just pissed that a character in their favorite game had on different clothes, or Microsoft released an update that broke 100 printer drivers worldwide.

As the old saying goes, learn to read the room.