Nvidia's shares hit an all-time high on Tuesday, making it the world's most valuable company.
The company is now valued at $3.34 trillion, and its shares have nearly doubled since the beginning of the year. Nvidia shares rose 3.5% to close near $136, giving it a market capitalization that surpassed Microsoft, which overtook Apple earlier this month.
The California company's meteoric growth has been driven by its dominance in producing chips essential for artificial intelligence (AI), which analysts have called “the new gold, or oil, of tech.”
Nvidia's growth is undeniable, with the company's stock price now over 100 times what it was eight years ago. At the time, the company was primarily known for competing with AMD in the graphics card market.
In recent years, Nvidia has benefited from surging demand for chips used to train and run generative AI models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. The company also saw strong growth in 2020 as sales of its graphics cards increased during the bitcoin mining rush.
Nvidia's rise is reflected in the growing profile of its CEO, Jensen Huang. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has even called the 61-year-old electrical engineer, known for his trademark leather jackets, the “Taylor Swift of tech” because of his celebrity status. Huang is especially popular in his native Taiwan, where he is often treated like a rock star, with fans asking for photos and autographs.
Competition among AI developers is fierce, with major tech companies like Microsoft, Google's parent company Alphabet, Meta, and Apple all striving to develop cutting-edge AI products. This competitive environment favors Nvidia, which not only develops its own AI technology but also dominates the AI chip market.
In recent years, Nvidia's revenue and profit figures have consistently beaten most analysts' expectations.
