(New York) Semiconductor designer Nvidia became the world’s largest capitalization on Tuesday, overtaking Apple and Microsoft, a symbol of the generative artificial intelligence (AI) fever that is shaking the markets.
The valuation of the Santa Clara (California) group has risen to 3,344 billion US dollars. As of 2:00 p.m. ET, the stock was up 3.92%.
Nvidia remained slightly behind the absolute record reached the day before by Apple, at 3.376 billion US dollars.
Since the launch of ChatGPT in late November 2022, Nvidia’s stock price has increased eightfold.
The company’s recent ten-fold stock split on June 7 helped further accelerate the stock’s rally, making it more accessible to investors.
The recent decline in bond rates also favors so-called growth stocks, including Nvidia.
The group owes its popularity to its graphics cards (GPU), chips capable of handling a considerable amount of calculations, necessary for the development of generative AI programs.
To make this feature possible, developers accumulate billions of examples of conversations and writing to predict the best response to a request.
Even if its major competitors like AMD or Intel, as well as “tech” giants like Apple or Microsoft, are chasing it, Nvidia maintains a comfortable lead in the market for semiconductors used for generative AI.
“Nvidia’s GPU chips are the new gold or oil of the technology sector,” say analysts at Wedbush Securities.
For them, Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft are now engaged in “the race for a $4 trillion stock market valuation.”
For a quarter of a century, General Electric, ExxonMobil, Microsoft and Apple have succeeded one another on the top step of global capitalizations, before the coronation of Nvidia.