American semiconductor giant Nvidia has just surpassed $4 trillion in market capitalization, becoming the first company ever to reach the lofty milestone.
Nvidia beat tech giants Microsoft and Apple to the market capitalization landmark as its stock price increased to an all-time high on Wednesday.
Company shares rose around 2% during early trading to reach an all-time high of $164.32 before cooling slightly to $163.36 in after-hours trading, according to Google Finance.
The spike in share prices, driven by investor confidence in AI’s transformative potential, pushed the firm’s valuation to record highs before retreating slightly.
Market capitalization is calculated by multiplying the number of outstanding shares by the current share price. Nvidia has 24.4 billion shares outstanding, meaning that its market cap has now dipped to $3.98 trillion on the after-hours share price.
AI boom catalyst
Nvidia’s market cap milestone highlights the fact that “companies are shifting their asset spend in the direction of AI and it’s pretty much the future of technology,” Robert Pavlik, senior portfolio manager at Dakota Wealth in New York, told Reuters.
Related: Nvidia plans to make cheaper AI chips for China: Report
The firm started out as a gaming chipmaker and then a crypto mining chipmaker, and is now a chipmaker for artificial intelligence computing power, Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B Riley Wealth, noted to USA Today, adding:
“It is continuing to move forward and be a clear early winner of artificial intelligence.”
A strong rebound
Despite facing a $5.5 billion valuation loss earlier in 2025 due to concerns about Chinese AI competitors and US export restrictions, and a huge $600 billion market cap decline in January, Nvidia has rebounded strongly.
The company reported more than $44 billion in revenue and $19 billion in earnings for the first quarter, up 26% compared to a year ago.
The firm’s share prices have gained 21.3% so far this year, outperforming the US benchmark index, the S&P 500, which has gained 6.5% over the same period.
Market cap competitors
Microsoft is the world’s second-largest company by market capitalization, with $3.74 trillion, and Apple comes in third place with $3.15 trillion, according to CompaniesMarketCap. Only these three companies have a market capitalization of more than $3 trillion.
Comparatively, Bitcoin (BTC), which revisited its all-time high on Wednesday, has a market cap of $2.2 trillion, and the entire crypto market is worth less than Nvidia, with $3.53 trillion in total capitalization.
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