AI gold rush pushes Nvidia past $5tn — a world first

Today, the American semiconductor giant Nvidia made history again by becoming the first company to reach a $5 trillion market cap. The valuation was driven by an extraordinary push that lifted the company to new heights as market players bet bigger than ever on AI.

The achievement underscores Nvidia’s rapid transformation from a specialized graphics chipmaker to a key leader in the AI industry. The company’s success has elevated CEO Jensen Huang to Silicon Valley legend and made its cutting-edge semiconductors a central focus in the ongoing tech rivalry between the US and China.

Until the debut of ChatGPT in 2022, Nvidia was mainly known for its consumer graphics cards made for gamers. Since then, the company’s stock has increased more than twelve times, reaching record highs in the S&P 500 and fueling debates about whether overvalued tech stocks could signal the start of another market bubble.

The new $5 trillion milestone arrived just three months after Nvidia crossed the $4 trillion mark. Now, the company alone is valued higher than the entire cryptocurrency market and roughly half of Europe’s benchmark equities index, the Stoxx 600.

Shares of Nvidia climbed 3.5% today after a string of announcements that solidified its leadership in AI. Yesterday, October 28th, CEO Jensen Huang revealed $500 billion in new AI chip orders and outlined plans to build seven new supercomputers for the U.S. government.

At current share prices, Huang’s stake in Nvidia is valued at about $177.3bn, according to Reuters. This makes the company’s founder and CEO the eighth-richest person in the world.

Huang was born in Taiwan but was raised in the United States from the age of nine. Later, he founded Nvidia in 1993 and has led it ever since. Under his leadership, the company’s H100 and Blackwell chips have become the driving force behind large language models that power tools such as ChatGPT and Elon Musk’s xAI.

Although Nvidia’s surge is impressive, it’s not the only one growing this year. Other Big Tech giants, including Apple and Microsoft, have also achieved valuations above $4 trillion in recent months. Many other tech companies have also increased significantly, including ones not listed yet, like OpenAI, which reached a $500bn valuation.