Nvidia made history Wednesday as the first company to reach $5 trillion in market value, fueled by a rally that has cemented its place at the center of the global artificial intelligence boom.
The Wall Street milestone underscores the company’s rapid transformation from a niche graphics chip designer to the backbone of the global AI industry, turning CEO Jensen Huang into a Silicon Valley icon and making its advanced chips a flashpoint in the technological rivalry between the United States and China.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, Nvidia stock has risen 12-fold as the AI frenzy propelled the S&P 500 to all-time highs, sparking debate over whether frothy tech valuations could lead to the next big bubble.
The new milestone, which comes just three months after Nvidia surpassed the $4 trillion mark, would exceed the entire value of the cryptocurrency market.
“Nvidia reaching a $5 trillion market cap is more than a milestone; it’s a statement, as Nvidia has gone from being a chip maker to being an industry creator,” said Matt Britzman, senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, who owns shares in the company.
“The market continues to underestimate the magnitude of the opportunity and Nvidia remains one of the best ways to address AI.”
After a series of recent announcements solidified its dominance in the AI race, shares of the Santa Clara, California-based company ended Wednesday’s session up 3% at $207.04, giving it a market value of $5.03 trillion.
Huang announced $500 billion in orders for AI chips on Tuesday and said he plans to build seven supercomputers for the US government.
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Meanwhile, President Donald Trump is expected to discuss Nvidia’s Blackwell chip with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday. Sales of the high-end chip have been a key sticking point between the two sides due to Washington’s export controls.
Rising shares increase CEO wealth
At current prices, CEO Huang’s stake in Nvidia would be worth about $179.2 billion, according to regulatory filings and Reuters calculations. He is the eighth richest person in the world, according to the Forbes billionaires list.
Born in Taiwan and raised in the United States since the age of nine, Huang has led Nvidia since its founding in 1993. Under his leadership, the company’s H100 and Blackwell processors have become the engines behind the large language models that power tools like ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s xAI.
While Nvidia remains the clear favorite in the AI race, its Big Tech peers Apple and Microsoft have also reached $4 trillion in market value in recent months.
Analysts say the rally reflects investor confidence in relentless spending on AI, although some warn that valuations may be rising.
“The current expansion of AI depends on a few dominant players funding the capacity of others. The moment investors start demanding cash flow returns instead of capacity announcements, some of these flywheels could grind to a halt,” said Matthew Tuttle, CEO of Tuttle Capital Management.
The heavy weighting of technology companies in the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 gives them broad influence over global markets.
Nvidia is due to report its quarterly results on November 19.
Geopolitical bargaining currency
The company’s dominance has attracted global regulatory scrutiny, and US restrictions on exports of advanced chips make it a key pawn in Washington’s strategy to limit China’s access to artificial intelligence technology.
“Nvidia clearly brought its story to DC to educate and curry favor with the US government,” said Bob O’Donnell of TECHnalysis Research. “They managed to touch on most of the hottest and most influential topics in technology.”
Tuesday’s developer conference also served as a platform for Huang to walk a geopolitical tightrope.
He praised Trump’s “America First” policies to accelerate investment in domestic technology, while warning that excluding China from the Nvidia ecosystem could limit US access to half of the world’s AI developers.
Rivals such as Advanced Micro Devices and several well-funded startups are looking to challenge Nvidia’s dominance in high-end AI chips, but it remains the industry’s top choice.
