Nvidia (NVDA) has surpassed Microsoft (MSFT) to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.
Shares of Nvidia finished trading on June 18 at $135.58 U.S., giving the company a market capitalization of $3.34 trillion U.S.
That was greater than the $3.32 trillion U.S. market capitalization of Microsoft and makes Nvidia the biggest public company.
Earlier in June, Nvidia’s market cap hit $3 trillion U.S. for the first time and passed Apple (AAPL), which is the only other company worth more than $3 trillion U.S.
A decade ago, Nvidia’s market cap stood at $10 billion U.S. Nvidia’s stock has multiplied by ninefold since the last bear market ended in late 2022.
The rapid growth, which has seen Nvidia’s stock rise 210% over the last 12 months, is being fueled by global demand for the company’s microchips and processors, which are used in artificial intelligence (A.I.) applications.
Currently, Nvidia controls about 80% of the global market for A.I. chips that are used in data centres and operate increasingly large workloads.
Founded in 1991, Nvidia spent most of its existence making microchips that run video games. It’s also created chips for cryptocurrency mining and cloud computing.
It has only been in the last two years that Nvidia’s stock has really taken off as its microchips and semiconductors became the engine that drives A.I.
On June 7, the company split its stock on a 10-for-1 basis. Nvidia chief executive officer (CEO) Jensen Huang now has a net worth of $117 billion U.S.
There is speculation that Nvidia may soon be added to the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the stock benchmark of 30 of the most valuable U.S. companies.
Microsoft, whom Nvidia surpassed to take the title of world’s most valuable company, has also benefitted from the A.I. boom through its partnership with privately held OpenAI.
Microsoft is one of the biggest buyers of Nvidia’s microchips and just released next generation laptop computers that run its new A.I. model called “Copilot+.”
The stock of Microsoft has gained 32% in the last 12 months to trade at $446.34 U.S. per share.
