Jensen
Huang,
co-founder
and
CEO
of
Nvidia,
during
the
Nvidia
GPU
Technology
Conference
in
San
Jose,
California,
on
March
19,
2024.
David
Paul
Morris
|
Bloomberg
|
Getty
Images
Nvidia
passed
Apple
in
market
cap
on
Wednesday
as
investors
continue
betting
on
the
chipmaker
behind
the
artificial
intelligence
boom.
It
is
now
the
second-most
valuable
public
company,
behind
Microsoft.
Nvidia
also
hit
a
$3
trillion
market
cap
milestone
on
Wednesday
after
shares
rose
over
5%.
At
market
close,
Nvidia
had
a
market
value
of
$3.019
trillion,
versus
Apple’s,
which
stood
at
$2.99
trillion.
Microsoft
is
the
most
valuable
publicly
traded
company,
with
a
market
cap
of
$3.15
trillion,
as
of
Wednesday.
Nvidia
shares
have
risen
more
than
24%
since
the
company
reported
first-quarter
earnings
in
May
and
have
been
on
a
tear
since
last
year.
The
company
has
an
estimated
80%
market
share
in
AI
chips
for
data
centers,
which
are
attracting
billions
of
dollars
in
spending
from
big
cloud
vendors.
Investors
are
also
becoming
more
comfortable
that
Nvidia’s
huge
growth
in
sales
to
a
handful
of
cloud
companies
can
persist.
For
the
most
recent
quarter,
revenue
in
its
data
center
business,
which
includes
its
GPU
sales,
rose
427%
from
a
year
earlier
to
$22.6
billion,
about
86%
of
the
company’s
overall
sales.
Meanwhile,
Apple
shares
are
up
only
about
5%
this
year,
as
the
iPhone
maker’s
sales
growth
has
stalled
in
recent
months.
In
its
most
recent
quarterly
earnings
report,
Apple
said
overall
sales
dropped
4%
and
iPhone
sales
fell
10%
from
the
year-ago
period.
Apple
faces
strategic
questions
and
issues
about
demand
in
China,
manufacturing
and
mixed
reactions
to
its
new
virtual
reality
headset,
Vision
Pro.
Apple
was
the
first
company
to
reach
a
$1
trillion
and
$2
trillion
market
cap.
It
long
held
the
title
of
most
valuable
U.S.
company
but
was
passed
by
Microsoft
earlier
this
year.
Microsoft
has
also
benefited
from
investor
demand
for
AI
infrastructure.
Nvidia
has
been
more
volatile
as
a
stock
than
Apple.
Founded
in
1991,
the
company
was
primarily
targeting
gaming,
selling
hardware
to
play
3D
computer
games.
More
recently,
it
sold
cryptocurrency
mining
chips
and
cloud
subscription
services.
Nvidia
shares
have
gone
parabolic
as
its
AI
business
has
developed,
rising
more
than
3,290%
over
the
past
five
years.
The
company
announced
a
10-for-1
stock
split
in
May.
