Nvidia becomes the world's most valuable company, surpassing Apple and Microsoft

Daniel Sims

Daniel Sims

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The big picture: Nvidia briefly overtook Apple as the world's most valuable company late last month, but this week it solidified that position for the second time in a more definitive way. The GPU maker's meteoric rise and the dethronement of Intel on the Dow Jones index signifies a major shift toward AI in the tech sector. However, uncertainty still surrounds the new technology.

Ending Wednesday with a market cap of $3.57 trillion, Nvidia has surpassed Apple to become the world's most valuable company. Over the last two years, the AI boom has multiplied Nvidia's market cap, stock price, and revenue, with no signs of slowing down.

Since generative AI began gaining popularity, companies worldwide have scrambled to acquire GPUs for AI models, with Nvidia's products being the most sought after by far. This trend has increased the company's market cap by 218 percent over the past year and more than 3,000 percent in the last five years.

Most valuable companies in the world

Source: companiesmarketcap.com

Nvidia first overtook Apple to claim the top spot in June when its market cap reached $3.34 trillion. However, a brief wobble in the AI sector in September caused a $279 billion loss – the biggest one-day drop in US history.

This shift raised concerns that the AI boom, arguably the tech industry's biggest trend since the advent of the Internet, could be headed for a collapse reminiscent of the dot-com bust. While this outcome remains possible – given the uncertain financial returns from AI and lukewarm customer interest – Nvidia has since recovered all of its September losses and then some.

With Nvidia firmly positioned at the top of the tech world alongside giants like Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, its position relative to former chip leader Intel is another sign of generative AI's impact. Chipzilla has faced multiple serious problems recently, leading to thousands of layoffs, buyout talks, and likely the company's first annual net loss in almost four decades.

Many observers believe that missing the AI boom was one of Intel's key missteps. Another stark indicator of the companies' divergence is Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's $104 billion net worth, which briefly surpassed Intel's entire market cap last month, although Intel has since rebounded to $107 billion.

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Nvidia becomes the world's most valuable company, surpassing Apple and Microsoft

 
Intel’s challenges really emphasize how missing a single wave in tech can be existential. Although you could argue Intel easily missed 2-3 waves, in addition to AI there was mobile and crypto (to a certain extent). While Intel was focused on traditional chips, Nvidia was quietly building the foundation of the AI era.
 
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AnilD said:
Intel’s challenges really emphasize how missing a single wave in tech can be existential. Although you could argue Intel easily missed 2-3 waves, in addition to AI there was mobile and crypto (to a certain extent). While Intel was focused on traditional chips, Nvidia was quietly building the foundation of the AI era.
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Missing mobile was a big fail, but ultimately just cost them growth rather than causing actual issues.
The one big fail was on the production side imo. Traditionally they were the undisputed leaders when it came to fabs. The best processes let them make the best CPUs. One they effed that up they lost in performance to AMD, their one rival.
To make up for their failing nodes they pushed the silicon harder and harder, that cost them Apple as a customer. Eventually that tactic stopped working as well as we can see from the unstable 13th and 14th Gen chips. That instability is costing them important contracts.
Now they have to outsource production to TSMC to try and stay competitive which is destroying the margins.
Their next fail is bound to be pulling the plug on GPUs. Pretty sure Celestial is on the chopping block unless Battlemage does insanely well.
 
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AnilD said:
Intel’s challenges really emphasize how missing a single wave in tech can be existential. Although you could argue Intel easily missed 2-3 waves, in addition to AI there was mobile and crypto (to a certain extent). While Intel was focused on traditional chips, Nvidia was quietly building the foundation of the AI era.
Click to expand...
More like being complacent. Mobile was a big miss when they declined Apple to make the CPU for their first iphone. But their complacency year after year from about 2015 on and their abandonment of their Larabee GPU project in early 2010s ruined their chances at an AI future. You cant be complacent in Tech.
 
VemigoAmigo said:
You will be waiting years for that. Blackwell is sold out for the next 24 months. TSMC is the bottleneck.

AI is not going anywhere anytime soon.
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It can be sold out all it wants, if investors go "hey, where's my ROI or added lifetime value on what I've invested? You've plugged AI and gone on about it for years now, I want my returns for supporting you" and pull any allocated funding or threaten to not support other projects in return financially, the benefits to consumers and businesses are vague and while there are avenues like chatbots or existing techniques like machine learning for data analysis, those have relatively narrow scope and in a lot of cases its not delivering any profit / value (all investors care about, they don't care if its cool or helping the customer, especially if its some VC who just sees a company as an asset) and that's when plugs get pulled, like in the .com bubble
 
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VariableSpike said:
It can be sold out all it wants, if investors go "hey, where's my ROI or added lifetime value on what I've invested? You've plugged AI and gone on about it for years now, I want my returns for supporting you" and pull any allocated funding or threaten to not support other projects in return financially, the benefits to consumers and businesses are vague and while there are avenues like chatbots or existing techniques like machine learning for data analysis, those have relatively narrow scope and in a lot of cases its not delivering any profit / value (all investors care about, they don't care if its cool or helping the customer, especially if its some VC who just sees a company as an asset) and that's when plugs get pulled, like in the .com bubble
Click to expand...
Forty years of neural nets and the best they can do is some pretty pictures; no wonder the aliens don't land, we must be the laughing stock of interstellar space.
Of course neural nets are nothing like a neuron. That hype came about when the connectionist models were almost dropped, and Grossburg figured he could fool the general public with such a name.
 
I am not sure where Techspot get there definition of "valuable" from but it is not the commonly used one in the English lanauage. Nvidia is definitely NOT the most valuable company in the world. It is a company with "the largest market capitalization in the world of publicly traded share companies" - in short form is has "the largest public capitalization". I agree it is not as "catchy" a phrase as "valuable" but at least it is the truth.
 
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