Nvidia reached a market valuation of $3.92 trillion on Thursday, positioning itself momentarily as a contender for the title of the most valuable company in history, reflecting a surge of optimism in the AI sector on Wall Street.
The company’s stock, a leading player in the design of advanced AI chips, climbed as much as 2.4 percent to $160.98 during morning trading. This peak momentarily surpassed Apple’s record market capitalization of $3.915 trillion established on December 26, 2024.
As trading progressed, Nvidia’s shares were up 1.5 percent, settling at $159.60 and resulting in a market cap of $3.89 trillion, just shy of Apple’s historical value.
The latest generation of Nvidia’s chips has significantly enhanced the training of large artificial intelligence models, driving strong demand for its products from the company based in Santa Clara, California.
Microsoft holds the position of the second-most valuable company on Wall Street, possessing a market capitalization of $3.7 trillion, with its shares gaining 1.7 percent to reach $499.56.
Apple experienced a 0.8 percent increase, raising its market value to $3.19 trillion, placing it in third position.
The fierce competition among major firms such as Microsoft, Amazon.com, Meta Platforms, Alphabet, and Tesla to construct AI data centers and gain dominance in this emerging field has generated immense demand for Nvidia’s high-performance processors.
“When the first company crossed a trillion dollars, it was astounding. Now, we’re discussing four trillion, which is remarkable. It illustrates the significant rush toward AI spending, with everyone pursuing it right now,” remarked Joe Saluzzi, co-manager of trading at Themis Trading.
Nvidia’s market value has skyrocketed nearly eight times in the past four years, jumping from $500 billion in 2021 to nearly $4 trillion today.
The company’s valuation now surpasses the combined market worth of the Canadian and Mexican stock markets, and it is also greater than the total valuation of all publicly traded companies in the UK, according to LSEG data.
Currently, Nvidia trades at around 32 times analysts’ projected earnings for the upcoming year, which is below its five-year average of approximately 41. This relatively low price-to-earnings ratio reflects rising earnings estimates that have outstripped Nvidia’s substantial stock price appreciation.
The stock has rebounded over 68 percent from its closing low on April 4, when market sentiment was shaken by President Donald Trump’s global tariff announcements. The recovery of US stocks, Nvidia included, is fueled by hopes that the administration will establish trade agreements to alleviate Trump’s tariffs.
Nvidia’s growing market capitalization highlights Wall Street’s substantial investments in the rising field of generative AI technology, with the firm’s hardware serving as the backbone of this development.
The significant share price increases of Nvidia and other Wall Street giants have resulted in retirement savers who invest in widely used S&P 500 index funds being more exposed to the future landscape of AI technology.
Nvidia currently represents 7 percent of the S&P 500. When combined with Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, and Alphabet, they account for 28 percent of the index.
“I have a strong belief in the productivity potential of AI, yet I am skeptical that the current form of AI being delivered through large language models and reasoning models will truly meet the high expectations placed on it,” warned Kim Forrest, chief investment officer at Bokeh Capital Partners.
Nvidia, co-founded by CEO Jensen Huang in 1993, has transformed from a company favored by gamers into a key indicator for the AI industry on Wall Street.
The stock’s recent surge follows a lackluster first half of the year, during which positive investor sentiment about AI was overshadowed by concerns over tariffs and Trump’s trade tensions with China.
A cut-price AI model from Chinese startup DeepSeek in January prompted a selloff across global equity markets, as it outperformed many Western rivals and raised speculations about potential reductions in spending on high-end processors.
In November of the previous year, Nvidia replaced Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, marking a significant shift in the semiconductor sector toward AI-related innovations and the graphics processing technology that Nvidia has pioneered.
© Thomson Reuters 2025
