Nvidia has overtaken Apple in market cap to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company. So far this year, the company’s share price has nearly tripled as demand for its graphics processing units soars. This is the second time this year that Nvidia has beaten Apple to the top spot – it was number one briefly in June 2024.
After rising nearly 3%, Nvidia closed on Friday with a market cap of $3.43 trillion, pushing Apple, which was at $3.4 trillion, into second place.
Apple’s share price has risen by about 17% this year, compared to Nvidia’s, which has nearly tripled. However, Apple is likely to see rapid growth again after releasing the Apple Intelligence suite of features for its iPhones.
Nvidia’s Graphical Processing Units (GPU)
GPUs are specialized electronic circuits that were initially designed for digital image processing and to speed up computer graphics. Over time, they have become more flexible and usable in a wide range of applications, including voice editing, gaming, content creation, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning.
Nvidia is today a dominant supplier of GPUs, which are used for developing and deploying advanced AI software.
Its GPUs are used by several leading tech companies, such as Meta Platforms, Microsoft, AWS (Amazon), and Google, to power and handle complex, power-hungry, AI tasks. OpenAI’s ChatGPT, an advanced AI language model and content creator, also uses Nvidia’s GPUs.
Over the past five years, the company’s stock has risen by over 2,700%. Revenue has increased by over 100% in each of the last five consecutive quarters; in three of them, it more than tripled.
S&P Dow Jones Indices
Last week, S&P Dow Jones Indices announced that Nvidia and Sherwin-Williams would be joining the Dow Industrial Average, replacing Intel and Dow Inc.
The following announcement comes from a S&P Dow Jones Indices press release on November 1, 2024:
“NVIDIA Corp. (NASD:NVDA) will replace Intel Corp. (NASD:INTC), and The Sherwin-Williams Co. (NYSE:SHW) will replace Dow Inc. (NYSE:DOW) in the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The index changes were initiated to ensure a more representative exposure to the semiconductors industry and the materials sector respectively.”
The following quote, regarding Intel, comes from an article that we published last week:
“Intel’s been a household name for decades. It’s known for its computer processors. However, the company has struggled to keep up with the mounting demand for more powerful computing hardware matching the requirements needed for the growing AI and machine learning sector. With that said, it’s not much of a surprise that Dow Jones decided to replace Intel with Nvidia.”
About Nvidia
Nvidia Corporation was founded in 1993 by Jensen Huang, Chris Malachowsky, and Curtis Priem. Huang is the company’s President and CEO. Its headquarters are in Santa Clara, California.
It is a multinational software and *fabless company that designs and supplies GPUs, application programming interfaces (APIs), and systems on a chip units (SoCs) for the automotive and mobile computing markets.
* A fabless company designs and sells semiconductor chips but outsources manufacturing to external foundries instead of making them in-house.