Less than a year ago, fabless chipmaker Nvidia Corp did the unthinkable- after crushing first-quarter earnings expectations, the Silicon Valley tech company’s market capitalisation shot above one trillion dollars.
Three artificial intelligence-powered jumbo earnings beats later, and that milestone pales in comparison to where Nvidia is today.
Thanks to skyrocketing demand for its cutting-edge AI-focused microchips, Nvidia is now valued at more than two trillion US dollars.
Such is the tremendous premium placed on Nvidia’s dominance of the AI computing industry that the stock added $270 billion in value on Thursday alone, a new record for any company in history.
Before that, Magnificent 7 colleague and Facebook parent Meta Platforms held the record when it added $196 billion in value on the second of this month after declaring its first dividend and posting robust results.
Today, Nvidia stock jumped a further 3.8% to add another tidy $70 billion to its current market value.
When dealing in the trillions, monetary values become somewhat abstract, but to put things into context, Nvidia shares are currently worth more than Brazil’s annual GDP and around the same as Italy’s.
Only Saudi Aramco, Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL, ETR:APC) and Microsoft have higher market caps than the chipmaker.
Fears of an Nvidia bubble have inevitably emerged; whether the company can sustain such lofty valuations will wholly depend on whether the demand for AI chips will continue indefinitely.
Only the future knows the answer to that.