Nvidia Dethrones Apple as Most Valuable Company in World

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang displays products on stage during the annual Nvidia GTC Artificial Intelligence Conference at the SAP Center in San Jose, Calif., on March 18, 2024. Josh Edelson/AFP via Getty Images

Nvidia surpassed Apple to become the world’s most valuable company, with demand for its artificial intelligence (AI) chips fueling the surge in its stock price.

Nvidia shares rose by 2.84 percent on Nov. 5, to close at $139.91, taking the company’s market capitalization to $3.43 trillion—higher than Apple’s market cap, which by the end of Nov. 5, was at $3.38 trillion.

Nvidia had briefly dethroned Apple on Oct. 25. The graphics chip manufacturer also has higher trading volumes. On Nov. 5, the corporation’s average trading volume was 248 million shares, about six times more than Apple’s 41 million, signifying high investor interest.

On a year-to-date basis, Nvidia is up by more than 190 percent, a far greater rate of return compared with Apple’s 20 percent gain. Nvidia came into significant prominence following the demand for its AI chips. The company’s shares have risen by more than 900 percent in the past two years and by more than 2,500 percent since 2019.

In the second quarter of its fiscal year 2025, which ended on July 28, 2024, the corporation reported revenue of more than $30 billion, up by 122 percent year over year. Net income was up by 168 percent during this period.

“Nvidia achieved record revenues as global data centers are in full throttle to modernize the entire computing stack with accelerated computing and generative AI,” Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of the company, said.

For the third quarter, the company is expecting revenues to grow to $32.5 billion. Third quarter results are scheduled to be released on Nov. 20.

Nvidia also will be listed in the Dow Jones index beginning on Nov. 8, reflecting the company’s stellar performance and growing stature. S&P said in a statement that the decision was taken to “ensure a more representative exposure to the semiconductors.”

A Sept. 7 report by Morgan Stanley predicts Nvidia will expand even further. The investment bank has set a base target of $630 for Nvidia’s shares, over four times the current price level. The bull-case scenario predicts the stock price to hit $800.

Morgan Stanley pointed out downside risks in the report, such as the company making significant investments in new but unproven opportunities, the PC market remaining sluggish, competition from AMD in the graphics processing unit (GPU) space, and cloud computers shifting to competitive custom hardware.

Antitrust Allegations

Nvidia’s strong position in the AI sector has attracted scrutiny from lawmakers. In September, for example, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) sent a letter to the assistant attorney general in the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice following reports that the agency has opened an antitrust probe into the company.

She welcomed the investigation, noting that Nvidia has been a “prime beneficiary” of the AI frenzy, with tech giants such as Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon pouring significant amounts of money into Nvidia chips.

As a consequence of this spending, Nvidia now controls an estimated 90 percent of the high-end AI chip market, the senator said, adding that the corporation also controls 98 percent of the data center GPU market.

In 2021, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) sued to block Nvidia’s attempt to acquire UK chip design provider Arm Ltd. for $40 billion. The FTC argued that the merger would have harmed competition in key tech markets such as cloud computing central processing units and processors for passenger cars.

Allowing the deal to go through would have given Nvidia access to sensitive information about Arm’s licensees, some of whom were Nvidia’s rivals, the agency stated. The company eventually backed away from the deal in 2022.

Meanwhile, Nvidia is expanding its capacity. In October 2023, the company said it was working with Taiwanese electronics manufacturer Foxconn to develop a new class of data centers.

These facilities would power a wide range of applications such as manufacturing and inspection workflows, development of AI-powered electric vehicles, and robotics platforms.

In March, Nvidia announced the launch of its Blackwell platform, which it said would enable organizations to build and run “real-time generative AI on trillion-parameter large language models at up to 25 times less cost and energy consumption than its predecessor.”