Nvidia Becomes World's Most Valuable Company, Driven by AI Advancements

Nvidia has become the world's most valuable publicly traded company, backed by the growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI).

Nvidia's stock price climbed 3.5% to $135.58, pushing its market capitalization to $3.335 trillion. This dethroned longtime market leader Microsoft, whose market cap fell to $3.317 trillion as its shares dipped 0.45%. Apple, previously the second most valuable company, saw its stock slip over 1% to a market cap of $3.286 trillion.

The surge in Nvidia's valuation highlights its dominance in the AI chip market. As the demand for powerful processors to develop and run AI systems continues to grow, Nvidia has benefited tremendously. Its graphics processing units are highly sought after by tech giants doing major work in artificial intelligence, like Microsoft, Meta, and Google.

Since its IPO in 1999, the company's stock has skyrocketed over 591,000% and nearly tripled in value so far in 2022 alone.

Nvidia's CEO Jensen Huang recognized the potential for GPUs in AI early on and directed significant investment. That bold strategic move has paid off exponentially as the importance of AI computing has increasingly grown in the past few years. Nvidia now controls about 80% of the market for AI chips used in data centres.